Today’s Monday. The President’s Day holiday. I appreciated the day off. It gave me a chance to get over to the shop and have them upgrade the software in my car. We’ve had a few problems, but they told us “Now that we’ve done the upgrade, drive it around a bit and let us know if you still have trouble.” Sounds like a plan. I’ve already noticed that it seems to be shifting a bit more smoothly. But then again…could just be my imagination. I’ve always felt my cars drove better after a trip to the dealer. This was definitely the case with my Volvo S60…in the US. When I went in for service, I knew they were following the checklist — tightening things up. Tweaking things. Topping things off. Seriously, it drove like a new car every time I left the dealer, and I felt the expense was worth it.
Then I got to Korea where, when my transmission started to go, the Volvo repair shop asked me when was the last time I’d serviced it. My answer? “Uh…aren’t you guys supposed to do that?” I mean, what’s the point in me bringing it to you guys every 5,000 miles if you guys aren’t running the checklist? And I’m pretty sure that the checklist should have “replace transmission fluid” at some particular mileage. But apparently, they don’t follow any checklists in Korea. It’s an oil and filter change and you’re on your way.
So I learned my lesson. “Know your mileage. Know what gets done at what point. Tell them to do it.” Or they won’t. Until it breaks. And those of you who know Korea know that that’s how it’s done. Preventive maintenance is tenuous at best. You run things into the ground, and then some guy who may or may not know what he’s doing comes to fix it. If you call anyone while it’s still working…well, they might just look at you like you’re an alien.
I don’t know how we finally got around to it, but Saturday afternoon we had a wonderful time with friends we hadn’t seen for about 20 years — two sisters and their husbands. I don’t know why we hadn’t seen them in the years since our return, but it didn’t seem to matter. We had such a good time, and Micha laughed the hardest I’d seen her laugh in a long time. We’ll certainly see them again. The sisters want some Budae Jiggae, and Songtan (the area in which I live) is famous for it.
Once you (or your wife) have seen just about anything you’d want to see on any of the streaming services, it’s a pleasant surprise to find not one, but two shows that are well worth watching. Netflix’s Full Swing — a show about golfers on the PGA tour — is wonderfully done. They spend each of the eight (I’ve finished six so far) episodes featuring a couple of golfers along with a couple of tournaments, and the storytelling is so well done. These guys are pretty much human after all. Incredible golfers and highly competitive, but still, people. And pretty interesting at that. If you like golf even slightly — even if you haven’t played it in as many years as me — you’ll like this series. And if you’ve never even played golf, I’d say you might just like it too, it’s that good.
The second show I recommend (probably even more) is Amazon’s Clarkson’s Farm (two seasons). It’s fascinating and at times absolutely hilarious. But it’s eye-opening too. Farming is incredibly hard, but Clarkson shows it in such a unique and humorous way. And Micha loves it too. We both spend a lot of time laughing, but also marveling at some of the things which a farmer must go through in their daily lives. It’s well worth watching (although, as a show about farming, you should expect some occasional bad language).
