Seoul Hero

Some people like to show off or otherwise attract attention to themselves. Today on the subway, a middle aged lady came and sat down beside me, while speaking loudly, like the older men do here, into her phone. She was one of those people who likes to wear a lot of really heavy gold jewelry. She pulled out her bankbook, and began looking at it, making noises that amounted to disgust. I couldn’t help glancing over, and nearly fell over! So many digits! Her closing balance was 14,000,000,000 Won! I triple-checked it because I couldn’t believe my eyes. She flipped back to the beginning, when she had more than twice as much, flipped to the end, and began grumbling again.

I wanted to tell her I could have been happy with just a small fraction of that, but I held my peace.