Seoulscapade

Here’s the scene of another crash outside my office window at work. It looks a bit confused but I’ll clarify as best I can, though it’s still a mystery how it happened. The white car, bottom left, crashed into the black car, which was innocently parked beside the curb. What was the white car doing driving along the sidewalk, you might ask? I have no idea. It’s what makes the crash unique compared to the usual routine.

Over the winter season, this spot and a little further down is host to numerous accidents on a daily basis. Most involve delivery motorcyclists losing their traction in the wet and sliding along down the slope. It’s a treacherous patch.

I’ll be sitting at work some rainy days and I’ll hear the typical sounds of an accident in progress. First, there might be the panicked tooting of a horn to herald the event, if more than one vehicle is involved. Otherwise, I’ll just hear the tire’s skidding and clatter of a motorcycle hitting the road. That is followed by the sound of plastic and metal sliding along bitumen.

I used to leap up and look out. There would invariably be a guy in a helmet limping around on the road. His bike resting on its side would be farther down the road. Now, I don’t bother. I just hear the accident and think, there’s another pizza or ja jang myeun delivery guy down. These guys are always in and out of the campus delivering food.

The ja jang myeun I mentioned is a noodle and black bean dish, and it’s part of an amusing tradition at the university. If someone spends a lot of money on orders of ja jang myeun for dinner, it supposedly reflects the overtime they put in, hard at work, in their labs, and presumably well into the night. Rumor has it that some professors used to cultivate ja jang myeun reputations to make themselves look good. What a laugh.

As I said, I used to leap up and look out when I heard an accident, but I just don’t bother these days. The frequency of the accidents, the lack of any real trauma, and the routine scene that greets any witness have made me rather blasé. It’s a curious thing to observe in oneself—and a little disturbing.