Korean Style Watch: My Korean Haircut

Intrepid co-worker Colleen and I went to get our hair cut at Song Hair Salon on the first floor of my building (salon slogan, in English: Your Beauty and Dream).

Korean shampooing is where beauty salon products meet professional wrestler hands. And believe it or not, I mean this in a good way. We sit down to get shampooed, and these innocuous looking middle aged women proceed to tenderize our scalps like our heads are made out of modeling clay. These women have fingers like you wouldn't believe. Keyboards and push-button phones tremble at their approach, and pianos lie shattered in their wake.

Then, feeling pretty darn mellow, we sit down to get it cut, giving directions as best we can entirely by pantomiming snip-scissor fingers (although I did bring down the dictionary so Colleen could point to the word "trim"). This was hampered by the fact that whenever I brought my arms out from under that little cape you put on, some well-meaning salon employee would come extract the cape from behind my elbows and tuck me back under again.

Colleen has naturally curly hair, and by naturally curly, I mean corkscrew kind of curly, which proceeded to overwhelm her Korean stylist by bushing out like a puffer fish upon the application of a blow dryer. He then made matters worse by trying to brush out the poof, and finally, on the verge of serious emotional distress, settled for massive application of styling products. Let's face it, this is not the sort of hair they teach you about in Korean beauty school. I have, however, seen her since, when she hasn't blow-dried or brushed it, and it looks fantastic. So all due credit to the cutter.

And how did my haircut turn out? Well, you tell me!

Front view:



















Back view:



















Side view:





















I'm pretty pleased, actually, although I would have been fine with it even shorter in the back. And it only cost about ten dollars, which for a shampoo, scalp massage, and haircut is a ridiculous bargain. I'm getting my hair cut every week!

Justin Drinks Weird Stuff For Your Entertainment, Part 4

In today's episode: "Pine Bud Drink!"



Wow. That was definitely one of the weirder things I've had in a while . . . and I live in Korea! It was like drinking a delicate solution of Vick's Vaporub and Pine Sol. Not an experience I plan to repeat.

Also: I won't go into much detail, because it's gross, but if you were thinking of drinking bunch of Aloe juice because I said it was really tasty . . . don't!

Hiking, Take 2

As you may have heard (from us, probably), this week is Chusok in Korea--it's a combination harvest-festival Confucian-ancestor-worship shindig, a time when everyone heads back to their hometown and daughters-in-law freak out preparing meals for their families. Of course, since precisely no one is from Seoul, this means the city pretty much empties out for the week. Perfect time to go hiking! Especially if your last attempt at a hike was crushed under the feet of the North-Face-clad multitudes (get the full story here).

Anyway. This attempt started at about 10:00 AM with Nana's decision to stay home to rest, nurse a stomach ache, and prepare to host some friends for an afternoon of football, fried chicken, and beer. (Our giant new $420 flatscreen monitor helped make this totally sweet, by the way.) Then, a few minutes later, my hiking party showed up--minus one more, a colleague who mysteriously disappeared in the course of several Skype calls yesterday morning. However, undeterred by this appallingly high rate of attrition, we two remaining hikers set off through the streets of Nowon, navigating by sight to the foot of a small mountain nearby.




Now, you need to understand that we chose this hike because it was supposed to be relatively easy--the guidebook talks about a wide, sandy trail meandering its way up from street level, with some nice views and some rocks at the top. Well, apparently we took a wrong turn somewhere, because the trail we took was steep, narrow, deserted, and barely-marked at all! But after about an hour of hard climbing, we were finally rewarded with a nice view across Nowon, a short rest--and, of course, a glimpse of the aforementioned wide, sandy trail. A tiny helipad--yes, helipad--signaled that we were at the summit. We continued on, deciding to press forward to the Danggogae Metro stop rather than retrace our steps to the foot of the hill.



But at the summit we were not! After about 15 minutes on the sandy, windy footpath, we reached a rocky clearing and found ourselves looking straight up. (We also found the well-marked trail down to Danggogae, but seriously, how could you pass views like these up?) The last 20 minutes to the real summit were pretty wild--much more climbing than hiking, with long lines of ropes to help you up the rock face and some harrowing drops at the side of the trail.














But, hey! The views were well worth it. I could see my house from here!


And just to add a little more thigh-burning goodness to the day, the descent up at the top here was even tricker than the climb: we eventually figured out it was best to go down backwards, belay-style, but on more than one occasion we had to rely on the tried-and-true buttslide, plus a little help from our Korean guardian angel (some guy who adopted us for the day and made it his business to make sure we got to the bottom of the hill in one piece).

We did, of course, make it to the bottom in one piece, downed a few bottles of Pocari Sweat, and then geared up for an afternoon of sloth and gluttony--fried chicken and two NFL games. Sweet!

Pakistani, Pancakes, and Persimmon

Yesterday, Nana and I spent the first day of our Chusok break bumming around downtown--by which I mean blowing a whole afternoon at the War Memorial Museum, about which Nana will have much more to say. But bookending our gluttonous dorkiness was gluttony of an altogether different sort, and it's of that kind of gluttony I'd now like to tell.

Now, let me preface these remarks with the fact that Nana and I have been craving Indian food for weeks, after hearing tell of a decent, if pricey, lunch buffet at a place called Mughal in Itaewon. As it turns out, we would be disappointed by neither the decency nor the price. The restaurant is set back on the little hill behind the Hamilton Hotel, and the narrow alley you've got to climb seems to deter crowds, though that may just be a function of the Chusok holiday, which pretty nearly vacates Seoul. A pretty place, with a terrace we opted against (kind of cool yesterday, and drizzly), cloth napkins (rare here, as far as I can tell), and, most importantly, non-spicy food options that weren't as bland as bland can be, which was a big deal for Nana. Of course, there was plenty of spicy food, too--great lamb korma--to supplement the samosas and tandoori chicken, and piles of naan and basmati rice. (Bleached short-grain white rice gets pretty bland when it's the only starch in your diet for weeks!) At 18,000 won (about 19-20$), it wasn't cheap, but I think it was worth it. And coupled with the quirky basement Italian restaurant we found near Yonsei University earlier this week, Mughal means we're 2 for 2 on finding good, non-bank-busting foreign food in Seoul.

Yesterday's second food adventure, then, was a pancake dinner (hey, it would have been a pancake breakfast EST!) with some work friends here in Nowon. (Yet another attempt to gorge ourselves on something we've desperately craved.) Despite the outrageously expensive maple syrup--seriously, we're talking whiskey prices--and the stray whole kernels of corn lurking in the batter, the meal was a rousing success. And, of course, totally unnecessary, given how much we ate at lunch a scant 6 hours before.

But the highlight of the evening--with the exception of Nana playing "azimuths" on a triple-word-score (yes, even in Seoul, we're still incurable dorks)--was definitely the persimmon, which, despite all appearances, is not in fact an orange-ish tomato. (Nana's description: "Like a peach, but grapier.") My new goal: find persimmons in a small enough quantity that I can eat them before they go bad. Curse you bulk fruit stands! [shaking fist]

(Edit by Nana: It was a double-word score. But it was still a sweet word.)

All my t'ings about me

THE SHIPMENT CAME!!!

I feel like Maureen O'Hara, in The Quiet Man. I don't remember the exact scene, or if it's before or after the items in her dowry finally arrive at her new home. But in any case, she says something to the effect of how all a bride wants is to have "her own t'ings about her," with a hard "h" from her Irish accent.

I was so happy to see all our wedding presents and books and cooler-weather clothes and realize that nobody was fencing them on a street corner someplace. Having some of the nonperishable food we sent (Kraft Mac'n'cheese, Quaker Oats S'mores-flavor granola bars) has already made a huge morale difference and, I hope, may help my stomach out. Wedding dishes. Linens. Comfy chairs. Bookshelves. Dog hair that stuck to things while we were packing. It's all here.

I'll be honest and admit that when I opened some pillows and they smelled so much like home that I lost it and cried for a bit (although not as much, I suspect, as Thoreau would have cried over the fact that things could make me cry at all). I am enjoying teaching and I do like Korea, but yes, I get homesick. And for some reason, when nothing here was familiar, it didn't make quite so much of a difference, but when I was opening box after box of home things, I wanted to know where the rest of it was. Where's the box with comfy sofas from Justin's house in Pittsburgh? Where's the box that puts our friends on this continent and lets us go grab a beer with them? Where's the box with my mom in it? (Yeah, that image is unintentionally hilarious... but the sentiment is there).

Anyway, I'm glad it's here, even if it did make me homesick.

Off to revel in my squishy comforter and firm pillow!

Apple for the teacher

There is supposedly a way to post on Blogger when you're firewalled out of logging in to Blogger, which is to send an e-mail to a particular address. I have never tried it before but am trying it now, since the school has blocked it. And when you think about it, this whole paragraph is a waste of your time, because if I got it right, you don't care, and if I got it wrong, then you'll never know. But who said this blog wasn't about wasting your time?

Next week is Chusok, more or less the Korean Thanksgiving, except they get a whole week off of school instead of five days. Woo! And it is apprently a time of much gift-giving, and teachers are often recipients. Which brings me to what really is a nice thought, but leaving us in a bit of a quandary: a parent has given us a box of some 40-odd apples the size of softballs. Each. So between the two of us, Justin and I have eighty apples and, short of acquiring a potato gun, no idea what to do with them.

So I'm trolling for recipes now. I don't have an oven, but some teachers are thinking of getting together this weekend and doing a big apple bake. I can also do anything on a stovetop or in a microwave.

Apple pie. Apple bread. Apple cake. Apple butter. Apple dumplings. Apple anything. If you got it, hit me up with it! It's harvest time. Let the traditional panicked preservation of produce commence!

PS. The shipment people SWEAR it comes tonight at 6. Be braced for overwhelming joy or catastrophic depression by 6:30.

(Note: This post is actually from Nana, but it was sent from my address.)

Typhoon Lagoon

First of all, let's get something straight. I'm from the Midwest. I have a check-down list for tornado shelters that's eighteen qualifications long, but my options for severe ocean-borne weather boils down to about two: stay in town, or leave town. I don't know about the details, and I never bothered. If any hurricane made it all the way to Columbus, I would be much more concerned with the Four Horsemen accompanying it than I would be about a storm surge.

Hence my complete inability to understand how I should react to the news that Typhoon Wipha is headed for Shanghai and may knock us around after it goes by. I mean, I don't even know what a typhoon IS. I know it's a lot of fun to say, and was the name of the wave pool at Wyandot Lake when I was a kid, where Angelique Zeune got a three inch splinter through her foot on a sixth-grade back-to-school trip. But that's probably not the fault of a typhoon.

After some research (i.e., the textbook I teach geography from), I learned that we refuse to call the exact same weather the same word if it happens in different parts of the world. A typhoon would be a hurricane in the Atlantic, and the one that might get near us would be labeled Category 4.

In any case, for those of you (i.e., moms) who are panicking right now, calm down. Yes, Typhoon Wipha is a bad one. But it's aimed very far south of us, and even if it does loop back around to dump on Seoul, it will have shed a lot of strength going over land. We will probably get soaked, and we'll probably get some heavy wind, but Seoul's not about to turn into Katrina-land. Which is a shame, because I've been looking forward to looting the stores downstairs. (Oh, I went there. Yes, I did.)
In any case, do send good vibes to the Shanghainese. But don't panic for us. Not about typhoons, anyway. As far as lesson planning goes, panic all you like. I certainly do!

Nevermind. (Argh.) (Notice how half-hearted.)

The SlingBox is not, in fact, working. At least not anymore. (Though Nana did get an Ohio State game out of it this afternoon.)

I suppose I should get in the habit of never announcing any remotely tentative good news on this site, as it seems good news, too soon made public, can only lead to reversal and frustration. (See previous post on shipping.)

And on another note, I guess I should take down those silly School of ROK Quick Guides, since none of the advice contained therein has done us a single shred of good.

Beginning Korean and Victory over the Slingbox

I amazed myself by totally understanding a security guard last night, without actually understanding almost anything he said.

Nana and I were hanging out in the rooftop garden of a coworker's apartment building last night, indulging in some, ahem, beverages and burning some proverbial midnight oil. (We were there so late that the giant neon 2001 Outlet sign shut off!) When out strolls one of the ubiquitous upper-middle-aged security guards of whom every building seems to have at least one (and no more than two).

Now, you have to understand the utter terror that can come over you when you see a fifty-to-sixty-something Korean approaching with a set frown on his or her face. Apparently, such folks have made it the national mission of their generation to shoo disrespectful Americans from places where they're not supposed to sit. (Hint: if it's a level surface, and people aren't sitting there already, you're not supposed to sit there.) And we, troublemakers all, were alone on the roof, sitting on a structure that might or might not have been a bench. So I, for one, prepared for the inevitable apologetic smiles and confused shrugs.

But then, when the guard started talking, some ghost of comprehension welled up from the depths of my soul. Inspired, I told Josh, our host, to tell the man his room number. Success! And then, when the guard pointed disapprovingly to our beverages and then vaguely towards the stairway, I didn't panic. No, somehow I decided that the man wasn't wagging his finger at our preferred choice of thirst-quenchers (nobody drinks like the Koreans, especially in public, or in the morning, or in public in the morning for that matter), he just wanted to make sure we threw our things away before we left the roof! (And no one is quite as fanatical as Koreans about proper waste disposal.)

Of course, as luck would have it, I hadn't actually bought us too much time, since our reserves of both energy and drink were rapidly dwindling. But, hey! When you're dealing with Korean, any shred of comprehension is something to celebrate, no matter how inexplicable. (And no matter how completely independent of anything the speaker actually said.)

In other news: Thanks to some help from my intrepid father, we appear to have the SlingBox working (finally)! Just in time to watch Ohio State's 33-14 victory over Washington! And maybe even today's/tomorrow's Steelers game. (Am I a bad fan? I won't watch if they don't win.)

To the anonymous student who let one in my class on Friday . . .

. . . I am duly impressed.

And also worried that, come Monday, it'll still be there.

Happy Problems -1

Turns out our shipment isn't coming until next Friday. (Miscommunication.) What a tease!

Happy Problem the Seventh

Apparently, kids make you dumber: I've forgotten how to count. (link)

2 Happy Problems!(?)!!

Happy Problem the First: Even this far into September, we keep getting new students at APIS. This is a good thing because new students mean more funds for the school, and also because new students are usually a reflection of the good buzz we've generated so far. APIS has really taken off this year, moreso than a first-year school really ought to, and that's pretty cool. Although now some of the classes are running out of desks and books and stuff (the kindergarten is simply running out of space!), and as the year goes on, it's really tough to catch the new kids up (especially when they're ESL cases, whom we were supposed to stop admitting weeks ago). But, hey! At least this means our prospects look good for next year! And we've got more than enough empty classroom space to expand into.

Happy Problem the Second: Pretty much everything we've been waiting for at school has arrived . . . and it all arrived within about 40 minutes yesterday morning. Seriously. Grading software, admin software, website software, library books, core literature--everything. And when the truck driver with the books arrived, he decided that he wasn't staying any longer than five minutes, at which time he'd leave with whichever of our fifty boxes of books weren't off the truck. So, naturally, my 8th grade English class was suddenly transformed into PE, as our principal enlisted us to schlep all the books up to the library on the third floor. But at least we were rewarded with popsicles. And, of course, our core lit books are finally here!

And speaking of (possible) arrivals . . .

Happy Problem the Third: We think (hope!) that our shipment is arriving on Friday! (Notice: we hope. But we refuse to believe it's actually coming. Every single step of this shipping process has been so opaque and so sketchy--I mean, our stuff was here in Korea for two weeks without anyone on either side of the pacific contacting us!--that we dare not expect our stuff to show up.) But we haven't been able to figure out if we're getting the move-in service (which we paid for), or if a truck will just be showing up with our pallet and telling us to unload it ourselves in ten minutes, or the loot's gone. (See Happy Problem the, er, Previous.) So just in case, we're going to invite a bunch of people over for KBBQ and pick up the tab if they end up having to schlep our stuff for us. (Yes, we will warn them ahead of time. That is, if our shipment is actually coming. You see! I said "if"!)

GRUMP.

I had to play Mean Mr. Goff with one of my classes today. I hate that.

Take a Hike!

Nana and I had our first Korean hiking experience last weekend. Shorter than expected--due to a late start and my better half's burgeoning cold--but enough for a brief glimpse into the Korean hiking culture, at least at one of the most popular day-trip destinations on one of the most beautiful days of the year.

So! We arrived at the subway station about five stops north of where we live. The station is actually named for the mountain, Dobongsan, which probably should have been our first tip off that this was going to be a strange day. Our second tipoff should have been the huge clusters of pristinely-equipped Koreans flowing uphill from the station . . . but before any of that, we found this completely inexplicable field full of flowers across from the station exit. So, naturally, we frolicked.



Then and only then did we turn our feet downstream . . . which is to say uphill . . . with the tide of well-dressed trekkers. (Mixed metaphors are an early sign of encroaching bedtime.) At which point we discovered that the trailhead was still a 10-minute walk away, through a not-so-small village of gear shops, knockoff gear shops, and open-air eateries serving grilled stinkfish (that's what I call them, anyway) that you could watch in their aquariums, floating upside down, blissfully dead, near the top of the tank. Needless to say, we pressed on, and quickly--I didn't even get a picture!--figuring that pretty soon the shops and restaurants and stuff would give way to wilderness, and at least a few meters of open trail.

Well . . . in short, we were wrong. Even given the large number of Koreans who seem to get all dressed up (we're talking backpacks, walking sticks, even helmets) to hike all the long way to the restaurant furthest from the bus stop at the head of the trail (to consume stinkfish and soju, of course), the trails were utterly packed.

And we're talking packed, here. Not hippy-whining about seeing eight other people on a seven-mile trail packed. Amusement-park packed. I mean, the real challenge wasn't the hiking itself (we didn't get all the way up to the hard stuff), it was hiking at speed, in time with everyone else. You couldn't take time to find a new foothold before you stepped, because then the person behind you would bump into you. And you had to find a foothold while your foot was in the air, because you couldn't go back--the person behind you already had a foot in the foothold you just left. No wonder they need all that gear! The poles are clearly for whacking slowpokes, and the helmets for withstanding whacks.

And if you think the handful of hikers out there in high-heels (carrying parasols) made anything better . . . well, you'd be wrong.

Now, don't you fear--the day wasn't a total loss. We did see a chipmunk, over which everybody completely freaked out, and we did learn a valuable lesson, which is never to hike on a nice Sunday in September (absolute most crowded it gets, except for maybe a nice Sunday in late October), unless you like to hike like you drive. But on the whole, it was an experience I don't hope to repeat. So next time, it'll be a weekday or a Saturday (most Korean kids are in school on Saturdays), and not an incredibly nice one. Though the stinkfish (ah, the stinkfish!) I don't think we'll have a way to avoid.

What's cooking?

You would think that when eating in restaurants is cheaper than eating at home, life would be one big going-out-to-dinner party. Well, you'd think wrong. Korean food is good, but if you don't eat spicy food, there's very little variety in your non-spicy options. Also, Korean food is very short on fiber (processed flour noodles and plain rice are the carb staples) and if I've gotten any calcium in a restaurant, it's been accidental.

To clarify, eating in restaurants is SOMETIMES cheaper than eating at home. I'd say that depending on what we get, Justin and I feed ourselves on about 9,000 to 12,000 won, on average. The dumpling shop is a little less, barbecue is more (about 9,000 each). 9,000 won is about $10, so about $5 per person. It might be cheaper to live on sandwiches, but a) we wouldn't eat as well, b) we would have to schlepp groceries, cook, and clean, and c) stuff in the grocery store isn't as cheap as the restaurant prices seem to indicate they should be. Justin wrote about this before; our newest potential explanation for retail food being pricier than prepared food is a tax that hits retail but not wholesale. Could be.

To illustrate, tonight, we decided to spoil ourselves by eating pasta. Yes. Pasta in tomato sauce is now a pampering kind of meal. I had to go to two stores, because the first one only had Korean-style noodles and no pasta. (No pasta?! I twitch at the thought!) At the second store, in the "Foreign Foods" section, I got rotini and Ragu. I don't think I've ever eaten Ragu in the USA, but somehow it felt like a comfort food. All I needed, I thought, was some cheese, and we'd be good to go!

Well.

Cheese is exotic in Korea. How exotic, you ask? Well, let's put it this way: I have never before seen anybody shelve Velveeta in the wine section. For real. That, Borden, and an 11,000 won block of parmesan. I've never heard of anybody eating parmesan straight, let alone eating straight parmesan with WINE. What on earth goes with that?

In their defense, there was also some Brie and Camembert, but come on. Velveeta???

We ended up mixing some pretty good Feta into the sauce and accompanying it with monterey jack melted onto French bread slices. Pasta, garlic and tomato Ragu, bread, and two kinds of cheese, and it was the most expensive dinner we've had since we got here! Fortunately, there was tons, so we'll eat it tomorrow and halve the cost.

I apologize if this was completely incoherent. Korean schools are just as much of germ factories as American schools, and I'm coming down with a cold. My new discipline threat to the children will be to breathe on them.

English buddies!

So there really aren't many foreigners in our part of Seoul. Certainly few enough that two white kids walking down the street can turn some heads. So some of the neighbors have started to recognize us, which is nice--a more-sincere-than-usual anyunghasseyo, an extra smile and nod here or there. But a few of our neighbors have really gone over the top!

For instance: Nana and I were riding home on the bus the other night with a bus driver we'd seen several times before. (I've seen a grand total of about five different drivers on our route.) The bus can be a bit awkward sometimes--a lot of Korean spoken, and always the fear that we'll do something wrong and be left completely unable to understand the driver's directions. We're mostly just satisfied if we can get home without breaking our spines (these guys take those speed bumps hard!).

Anyway, the stop before ours, the bus empties. We're the last souls destined for Save Zone tonight. Then, at the last stoplight before our stop, the bus driver looks in his mirror and starts speaking--in English! Very good English, too. The exchange goes something like this.

Driver: mumble mumble
Justin: I'm sorry? (apologetic shrug I use when hangukoleur molumnida just won't come out>
Driver: You are getting off at Save Zone?
Nana: Yes, this is our stop.
Driver: Do you speak any Korean?
Justin: Not much!
Driver: Can you say "ahn-yung-hah-say-yo?"
Nana and Justin: "Anyunghasseyo!"
Justin: Yes, and "konggibap"! (bowl of rice)
Nana: "Dongaas!" (pork cutlet)
Driver: Ah! You can speak Korean!

And then! Not five minutes after we get off the bus, Nana and I are in the bakery downstairs, buying breakfasty things (which are surprisingly hard to come by at breakfast-time, oddly enough). And the manager, who definitely recognizes us by now, busts out in--you guessed it--excellent English! Good enough to ask us if we're English teachers (I had to specify that we're not ESL teachers--in Korea, that's an entirely different breed--but I can explain that later), and even persuade us to sign up for a point card. (We go to the bakery a lot.)

So, anyway, long story short, I ran this by Paul, our resident expert on being-whitey-in-Korea, and apparently this isn't uncommon. Many, many Koreans speak pretty good English, especially around Seoul . . . but they're terrified of using English in front of other Koreans. (If your English is bad, you look stupid, and if your English is good, you look like a smarty-pants.) But the second you get a Korean alone with English-speakers, out come the z's and the f's! (No z or f in Korean.)

And: we're helping the bakery guy with his English vocab. He now knows that "miles card" is only for airline rewards!

THE BIG SNIT!!!!

Caution: Non-Korea post

The defining film of my childhood is now available on YouTube!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvINxJFOcCU

I especially like the part where they're playing Scrabble and he has nothing but EEEs.


Edited to add: Okay, now I actually watched it again. Um... what the hell????? No wonder I'm so messed up.

Could it be?

Our recalcitrant shipping company has finally told us that our shipment has arrived in Seoul and is ready to clear customs. Since as recently as, oh, THIS MORNING we were wondering if they'd stolen the whole thing, we're hesitant to believe this news, but oh, how we want to! Especially since there's been a pretty intense cold front these last couple of days and most of our coats and sweaters and such are in the shipment. And I want the rest of my shoes.

Send more positive vibes! We're not out of the woods yet!

If you don't have anything to say...

Post anyway!

Only a few minutes and not much to say so it'll be a short post.

I discovered to my chagrin on Monday that the unit I just completed with my sixth graders (prehistoric man and early farming) was supposed to take me six weeks. What? I could barely keep two weeks interesting! Come on!

So now a mad slowdown in curriculum is taking place, with the exception of the sevens. This is annoying because my sevens are the only class that might actually be considered behind, since it's the only class still in unit 1 and unit 1 isn't even technically in my standards.

Fine. If I have to slow down later and spend three days in Egypt on the alphabet alone, I will do that. But I'll be damned if my sixth grade is going to have to spend any more time on the role of the plow in the formation of early cities. "The hell with the role of the plow in the formation of early cities, that's our motto!"

PS. Is that my air conditioner beeping? What the heck?