My downstairs neighbor smokes. He smokes and it drifts up into my apartment. I live on the 17th floor, so it's a little surprising it wafts up here. At first, when I moved into my apartment, I thought it must be coming under the front door, since a lot of people smoke in the hallways around here. I even considered it might be coming through my wall, which sounds ridiculous, but if you could see my apartment you might not think so. It's modern, only two years old, but like a lot of things in South Korea, its made to last about 5 years, if that.
So here I am, typing, not smoking, like I used to, but smoking all the same, every hour or so. Not pleasant.
The other night I went out with a co-worker. We found what we thought was a bar called Kenny Rogers, but it turned out to only be a singing room. We saw another bar, called Menchester, which we thought might have pitchers of beer, since that's all we really wanted. But no, that was a cocktail bar. Finally we found a beer called, in English, Fresh Beer. That was the ticket.
My co-worker gave up smoking in April. I haven't smoked habitually for 2 years. Korea is a tough place to give up smoking because it costs about $2 a pack. My co-worker talks to me about smoking like I just gave it up last week, I think because he feels like he gave it up last week. I've gotten to the point with smoking that I never crave it physically, but I sometimes miss the process; as I suppose many smokers do.
During the day, before we went out together, my co-worker made a couple jokes about smoking that night. Again, like we'd both just given it up. I think he came around to the idea that I didn't care one way or the other and started making "don't let me do it" kind of jokes. That night, walking down the street, as we looked for a bar, my co-worker started looking for cigarettes.
"They'll go out and get them for you at some bars," he said almost rhetorically, I think to me.
I suddenly wondered if I should play the role of the "hey man, maybe you shouldn't do it" guy.
"Are you sure you want to do that?" I said with very little enthusiasm.
He did want to. He disappeared into a mart. We found the Fresh Beer place rather quickly after that.
I quit smoking before I came to Korea, and then restarted within a month of arriving. In part due to the economical reasons stated previous, and partially because you can smoke virtually anywhere any time in Korea. Including the workplace.
At my first job in Korea we used to teach 50 minute classes with a ten minute break in between. At nights, the further end of the hall, even on the 12th floor, I could find 5 or 10 of my co-workers, and a handful of students lighting up next to the coffee machine.
It was an event...a party, every hour. It was very manly as well. Women, if they smoke, don't smoke with men. This is changing, like most things regarding gender, but in the time that I smoked at the end of the hallway at my school, I saw a total of one woman smoking there and she rushed to put out her cigarette when I, a teacher, walked up.
It was a real boys club. There were instant coffee cups with cigarette butts stubbed out in the dregs strewn on the floor along with spit, farmer nose blows, food wrappers, hair, the whole bit. There was one window with a sprawling view of the ghetto that led to the local bridge. It must have looked like a chimney from the outside.
Who could pass that action up? Well, me after I contracted bronchitis and was told by a doctor to lay off for a while. That was enough for me to not start smoking again. That is, until my downstairs neighbor just lit up again.