Hi Momma,
Well, so far, it’s been an adventure here in Korea. I got fussed at today. Not quite yelling, but a good fussing.
I was standing on the corner by the little grocery store near my apartment waiting to cross the street. There’s a walk – don’t walk signal at the corner, but this wasn’t no big road and once the only car in sight passed I started to walk across. And that’s when the fussing started. There were two middle aged women next to me (people here call them azummas but that’s a whole nother topic, Momma.) Anyway, these two azummas didn’t have a thing to say until I stepped off the curb to cross the street. Then they went into overdrive and boy, howdy, did they fuss. I didn’t understand 99% of it, but one word that I did get was “danger.” That word came out nice and clear and loud and once they figured I understood that word they said it over and over again. One of them pointed at the walk – don’t walk sign and kept saying “Danger! Danger!” Dang, Momma, I though she was gonna start swinging her arms and spin around in a circle like that robot on that old TV show “Lost in Space” except I ain’t no Will Robinson and this ain’t no outer space.
Continue reading 'Letters from Korea – II'»
Dear Momma,
The plane ride in from home was fine, but really long. When we left Charleston, we had to take a shuttle flight over to D.C. and then a bigger jet to San Francisco before we went to Seoul. If I’d a known that we was gonna have to wait 2 hours through baggage check, security, and waiting at the gate and all that just to go to D.C. I’d a had the school fly me out of there. We could of drove together to D.C from Coalwood just as well as we could of to Charleston. Once I got to Seoul I had to take a shuttle bus to another airport before I got on a jet to Ulsan. That was a full day of travel, for sure, Momma.
Anyway, I’m here now and I’m settled into my apartment. The Korean lady who picked me up at the airport seems really nice. I didn’t have to work the first day I came ‘cuz I didn’t get in until 9p.m. and they knew I’d be whipped from a day in the planes. But by Tuesday they had me in the classrooms from 1:30 until 8:30. I probably could of worked on Monday, but the school owners said I should rest. They gave me a couple of papers with the Korean alphabet said I might want to study some. How ’bout that Momma? I ain’t even been to school yet and I already got homework!
Continue reading 'Letters from Korea – I'»
Jim pulled on one leg of his trousers and stopped. His wallet had fallen out of the back pocket and dropped onto the locker room floor. Before slipping it back into his trousers, he opened it and looked at the top picture. It was still bright and clear except for the edges which had become a little faded from living in the tight, sweaty space between Jim’s butt and his chair. Jim looked at the picture of himself and his wife and kids. He hadn’t really given it much more than a fleeting glance over the past several months and now he really looked at it closely.
His wife looked the same. Despite being 36 and approaching middle aged, she still looked great and he thought she was incredibly sexy. He, however, had changed considerably since this picture was taken and he could barely imagine going back to that body.
“Who’s that fat guy with your wife and kids?”
Jim jerked his head to the right to see Arnie, grinning and peering over his shoulder at the picture. Arnie and he were workout buddies. They shared both the same time slot at the gym and division in the Company.
Continue reading 'The Electric Communists'»
This section of UlsanOnline.Com is dedicated to the writers and readers in Ulsan. Short stories, opinion pieces, editorials, non-fiction and novels are always welcome.
Writers may choose to write under their own name using Facebook credentials, they may create a new login id or may even write anonymously (if you wish to write anonymously, please email us and we will discretely help set you up) .
Unless specifically requested, submitted writing will undergo no editing for gramatical correctness or spelling. However, in keeping with the general nature of UlsanOnline.Com’s place as an informative and useful website, we may choose to edit some content to stay within the laws.
Long pieces will, however, be edited with the “insert more tag” 
to enable more stories per page when viewing multiple articles. In addition, if the original writer did not already categorize the piece, a category may be assigned by UlsanOnline staff.
For readers, please vote on articles you read and provide comments to help the author further their craft.
Comments (0) 