So downstairs there was some idiot hollering at the Gwallishil Ajeoshi.
Gwallishil Ajeoshi: this guy’s someone I’ve mentioned before, an older man who is something of a cross between a watchman, an ineffectual gatekeeper, and an information source. I asked him for a phone number for a repairman when the heating system was all screwed up in my flat. I popped down to ask him why the water was shut off one day. He gives hell to people who don’t dispose of their garbage properly.
I can’t say for sure what the drunk guy was yelling at him about, but I surely can imagine any number of reasons. I didn’t understand much beyond the very common cuss words, but I did hear something about the yelling-man’s girlfriend coming down to the Gwallishil, or maybe about the guy coming to see his girlfriend but being locked out or something. Anyway, the frunk guy started hollering around midnight and was at it for a good half an hour. I didn’t hear anyone else holler out their windows like I did, yelling cusses and telling everyone to shut up. (It worked for short periods of time, a couple of times, but the angry guy always came back.)
During the argument, the Gwallishil Ajeoshi threatened to call the police several times but didn’t do so, and finally some neighbours who’d gone down the mediate the argument (by standing around looking concerned, and urging the nutball to leave) finally dragged him away for the Nth time, and finally for good. (At least, I hope the bastard’s passed out somewhere and not making his way back.) But before they dragged him away that last time, he broke the damned door on the Gwallishil (the maintenance office).
I was surprised more people didn’t yell out their windows. Maybe the nut was a gangster or something? He sure talked like one. I was tempted to throw a glass jar out the window onto the pavement (or, if I was lucky, his head) but I restrained myself in case he was a gangster. But I tell you, it was hard to hold myself back.
Ah well, it’s silent out there and time to go to bed. Whew!
I had a similar experience last month. The guy below my apartment playing music with high bass until 4 in the morning one night and the next day I complained to the security guard and he nodded in understanding. The next night it started again, so I went to the security guard and woke him and got him to call the apartment at 1230am.
When I went back to bed, the music was still thumping, so I went to the aparment and kicked his door with my foot, police style. He ran to the door yelling his customary hello hello.
What followed was me yelling in English, words like; turn off the music or I will #$%#ing kill you, you #$$% bag !@#hole.
Now I sleep in silence!
Overreaction? Not really, I was angry the Security guard is not taken seriously and the guy didn’t listen to him, or he didn’t do it. compounded on top of that is the fact that I have to wake at 530.
Wow, this seems to be going around. There’s a lady who lives downstairs from us who every once in a while decides to play loud music literally in the middle of the night. It’s always the *same* bloody CD!
As it happened this week, my flatmate had enough and tried banging on the floor and at the woman’s door – no reaction. Eventually someone else was kicking at her door and she turned the music down, but she never opened the door to anyone! What a psycho.
Also on the same night, some other woman was knocking on her window and calling for help – apparently she lives with some guy who’s been previously convicted of murder or something like that, so eventually someone called the police for her. This is a first.
Except for the biatch downstairs, this is usually a pretty quiet house. We just have mental asylum nights every once in a while.
Sometimes people can be too nice to offenders (especially drunk ajeoshis) in Korea. Cops actually get beaten up in their own offices by these morons from time to time. They should learn to become hardasses like U.S. cops.
Well, as long as the cops can control themselves once they get started “restraining” such morons, then I’m all for them being hardasses. There’s no reason some adult male should have license to assault whomever he pleases just because he decided to get drunk, ajeoshi or no. (The police brutality we hear about sometimes from cops in the US and in Canada is certainly not preferable, but self-defense is certainly warranted, in a degree just slightly more than necessary.)
Assault anyone and as far as I’m concerned you’ve earned yourself a smackdown by as many people as there are present to restrain you. Assault a cop (however uselessly) and I figure you’ve bought yourself (at the very least) a night in the lockup plus the humiliation of a call to your wife or mom (whichever one you’re living with, which covers most people) to come get you in the morning, just before you wake, with no concealment of why… though preferable would be a period of public service following. On Saturday nights, starting at ten pm and running till 4am.
One of the reasons I personally didn’t go downstairs to get involved in shooing this guy away was that I’m a foreigner. While the guy might have been embarrassed by my presence, I’ve encountered far more cases of resentment than respect from drunk guys of about his age, in this part of the country, so it’d probably piss him off more having me try to shoo/lead him away. I’ve also heard that foreigners involved in physical confrontations—even when they are only defending themselves—tend to get blamed for involvement (or even initiating the fight) and risk a fair-to-good chance at deportation. I don’t know if it’s true, but didn’t want to risk any of that.
But I sure did want to drop a small glass jam jar—because I have no beer bottles—onto the pavement, though I didn’t. (Shock and scare effect, is all I was thinking. Not injury.)