I Live in Cheong Dam Dong 4: An Easily Written Poem

HyeJa is at the Morning Club, the other ajummas are waxing poetic on something about sadness is emerald in color, blind angel gazing and Moebius strip.

HJ: What was that all about?! …Stop speaking in tongue!

^Exactly my feels at work meetings with not-working caffeine (or just an hour ago staying awake with MissingYou11).  Do I wanna break out and entertain myself with a bit of karaoke just to wake the whole room up?   Sure.  I’ve just never done it.  HJ shouldn’t give me ideas! *Seriously YooChun, just croons My Girlfriend~ already, she’ll stop hiding around the corner,mopes and tears THE WHOLE FREAKEN EPISODE!!!*

This is what HyeJa said *courtesy of MrX, which is off Cho Jong Pil’s song 그 겨울의 찻집 Teahouse that Winter*:

I walked right into the wind,
이른 아침에 그 찻집
to that tea house in the early morning.

마른꽃 걸린 창가에 앉아
I sat by a window surrounded by dried flowers,
외로움을 마셔요
And drank my loneliness away,
아름다운 죄 사랑 때문에

Then HJ….

SINGS♬ ~~~~!

♬ ☆Because~ ♬ of~ the~ ☆ ♬beautiful ❤ ☆~sin♬ ❤ ☆ ~that ♬ ☆  ☆~is~ ❤ love♬ ❤ ❤ ❤ ♬ ~~~~!
홀로 지센 긴 밤이여

Mr Poetry Teacher looks perplexed while the ahjummas are laughing their asses off, PinkLady gently smiles.  The lesson of the day: any thing can inspire poetry flowing like lyrics, happiness, sadness, loss…even anger.

HJ saves up 150,000 won.  She’ll spend it on one of the ancient appliances breaking apart all around.  MS walks in for breakfast, handing her the electrical bill.  HJ screams! It is 280,000 won.

She asks what MS does for a living and squeals like a fangirl hearing he’s a cosmetic surgeon with office right around the corner.  Gosh, her smile is adorable beyond words.

JE is also smiling! 😀

The rest of the house finds out MS is an MD.  Aunt is also smiling gorgeously, at Doctor Choi, and feeding him!

At the other side of the table, mopey and grumpy:

JE arrives at an Italian Restaurant, Piace.  Her friend has to go abroad for a while, since JE’s living right around the block at Cheong Dam Dong she is asking her to help out.  Piace is so exclusive it’s regulars only, no weirdos.  Something might happen between you and one of them, said her friend.

JE is preening herself, her friend gave her tips on the most important thing, impressing her mot stylish cousin, the Chef.  A lady in a fancy sportscar arrives, her outfit is full of ka’ching.

The price tags all shatter as she turns around.

The three ahjusshis is discussing at length about last night’s…..ramyun.  Or the theory behind the perfect slurping of ramyun and its soup in this configuration.  Doc has a very different viewpoint. No, it doesn’t involve finger licking.

At Piace, we meet Chef Hwang Jung Min  interviewing JE.  Barely seconds into it, she is chatting in French on the phone while JE realizes Chef’s designer brands are not fake at all.  Her friend has told her of Chef’s sparkling credentials, including the Queen is a fan of her cuisine.

Hearing the chatter of customers, JE turns around.  OMO!

JE: Oma!

Pink Lady knows Chef very well, even her husband, the Ambassador has been talking nothing but Chef with the Premier the other day.

Chef is surprised to see JE still hanging around (hiding) after she’s told her to start tomorrow.  After going through her resume of education at a provincal college, cooked at a hotel but only good at mori noodles, no experience as a manager, Chef asks bluntly, ‘Why are you here?’

JE:  I have to make a living… somehow.

Chef: Well, I see your point.  Lets try our best!

JE (all smiles):  You like me?!

Chef: Nah… (and she leaves)

JE: Ha…You don’t beat around the bush!

HJ bumps into JE in the ladies’ room.  Each of them telling the other to not make a scene as they are just inching into their environs.

The Ladies Who Lunch bounce off artists, Hermes plates and ‘oysters’.  HJ gets only the word ‘plates’ but nothing else.  Them saying ‘oystools’ at the Mall, ‘oystools’ are good these days, bemuses her.  HJ is perplexed when the ladies insist on going Dutch, 150,000 won each in cash, why not let PinkLady pays when she offers to treat!?

What is causing this face on JE?

This, and a lady he’s with, carrying  JE’s ex-Khanel.

JE again embarrassing herself faking a patron here when Chef tells her to work early the next day.  SY is amused, his gaze follows JE stumbling out of the place while answering his Chef noona questioning if they know each other.  He says, ‘Looks like it.‘

JE walks off defeated, telling her gf over the phone she is not able to impress the chef at all.  ‘Do we have to get along?  We are so different…’ JE grumbles to herself as Chef approaches her, offering her a ride, in a different car as she arrives.

JE spills it out she can never live up to the expectations of someone living with all these luxurious brands.  This shocks Chef.  This is the first time someone can see they are real.  JE brightens up, wondering if she’s hire.  It looks like it.

RoadRAGE!  While they may be from different worlds,  they bond over cutting the douche a new #@$$&%^$!##&!^, or so they @#$Y%^@.  Top 1% of country Unni Chef is officially COOL.

In the 3-guys-one-room, BH hits WH petty betting with SH for refusing to help but asks Dr Choi to do the chore instead.  Doc calls him out for blatantly cheating SH.  WH fights back it’s his style, and challenges Doc to a game.  BH walks in again when she witnesses 2 stooges and a Doctor morphing into 3 stooges.

Whenever the stress of life is unbearable, JiEun will cook her special comfort food, cheap mori noodles.  Too bad no one in this entire neighborhood can appreciate.  She is about to sit down and enjoy when she sees the hint of her Oma sitting at the stairs, having a serious question for her:

HJ: What is ‘Oystool’?…Oystar?

JE: Oystar?  You mean Oyster!  Samchun/Uncle is crazy about them!

With that HJ switches on her super saiyan ᕙ(⇀‸↼‶)ᕗ mode of pissed off:

JE walks back to her fav bowl of noodles when Jobless Hobo is already digging in, amazed at how good the noodles are.

Thought bubbles:

JE: He knows mori noodles !?

Jobless Hobo: On the house for very loyal repeat customers?…Or do I have to pay?

JE:…how does he know?

SH is timing…the toilet flushing? It’s…’leak’ time. <_<  According to WH, doc cheats. The shaking (of droplets) after can’t be counted, SH insists.  Doc asks if it is not piss.  *I’m about to have a hernia fr lolzzzzzzzz*  BH is witness to the 3 stooges ‘at work’ again, bickering over piss and the use of honorific of ‘hyungnim’

Manager is bsing and abusing the CDBB boys again.  To train their ‘concentration’ for a promotion show he says he’s in talk with the PD, they are sticking eyes on stuffed animals.

With Teacher’s lesson in mind, HJ works on her poem:

Sharpening my knife, inch by inch.

Sharpening my knife as the vermin in my gut is shivering in fear.

Where could you be hiding?  Dirty worms, you! MUAHAHAHAAAA~~~~!!!!!

GOTCHA!

Stop squirming, you ugly stinkers!

Doc and WH starts the next day with more bickering over the cold, anyone who has been through MS can shrug it off as nothing, not a medic of course, according to WH.  *THEY ARE SHARING A BLANKIE!!*

Where WH was stationed, all the thermostats broke because it’s -50C without windchill.  Doc one-upped WH with his claim every operation he did on broken foot was on mountain top, blood all frozen he had to break it up for transfusion.  WH jabs at least no drills for medic. *I got all emotional thinking of the drills mybinnie just went through ;___; but he is back!!! D7!!!*

JE spits out her water as if she’s seeing monsters on paper.  It is HJ’s poem.  JE runs as if her life’s dependent on it.  It does, those ahjummas are fancy patrons at the restaurant.  IF they know HJ is her mother…

We have her Mom HJ reading her masterpiece line by line as JE is sprinting across CDD.

The rest of HJ’s poem,  straight from MrX:

Stop squirming, you $%#^#^#.I’ll slice your fu$^#ng *$*%*%^*% in one strike.

Oyster? Hermèr?!How about a can of whoop ass?

As if my knife could stand a few crotchety b^$%^$ sh^$ money from their @$$%&%es.

I’ll slice right in between that d%$#head of yours until all the b^$$%hit comes out.

A few seconds later, JE intrudes with a concerned tug, ‘Mom it’s time for your medicine.’

We see the legs of the 3 stooges again, this time at the rooftop, talking about…pee, again. Are we going there, Show?!

Are they going have some pee contest TOPLESS?!

No, snot this time, a testiment of not able to brave the cold topless, no swallowing, who is first to leak from nose loses (body fluids, dignity, bragging rights,Top Dog, the status of Hyungnim, manhood, pants?!  EVERYTHING.)

SH is standing judge, so is Dog Poo, of course our trusted witness all along BH walks in:

WH may have spotted the First Snot under Doc’s nose which Doc says it’s a nosebleed.

It’s colorless cause he’s anemic. And…

*flop*

How Dog Poo stays so Zen is beyond me.

JE coos HJ, seeing a shrink is a sign of wealth. ‘It is ok.’

At next meeting, HJ is approached by a classmate, sharing her shrink problem.

So it really is OK.