Day 78: The Cell Saga

Friday of a week ago, Friday, May 1st, I lost my cell phone.

Losing a cell phone is a BIG DEAL in Korea. Although mine was quite a cheap model, I had become quite attached to it. I had composed a number of custom ring tones for it, it had a Korean-English dictionary that was quite handy, and it was a stylish black sliding model. Worst of all, it had, in the place of a usual cell phone charm such as Mario or Doraemon, an expensive Samsung-brand 8 gigabyte USB memory drive. I was devastated.

I lost the phone after a long night of debauchery which included time spent playing Titanic at Exit and singing my lungs out at a noraebang. I was quite sure that I had the phone at Exit, since Friend Kenno reached me there, and also Friend Joe confirmed that I was looking up someone's number for him when he saw me there. So, then, the phone must have either been at Exit or the noraebang, or lost somewhere in my apartment (or elsewhere in between these three destinations).

Saturday, a rainy Saturday, I headed out to seek my lost phone. The moment I realized it wasn't on my nightstand (around 11 AM), I performed my usual phone-finding trick - I dialed it from my landline. No response, and instead a recorded message in Korean saying something (I guessed) about the phone being off. So no such luck with the ring-and-listen trick. So I set off, heading first to the noraebang. After much explanation, the kindly old man took me to the room I was sure we sang in the previous night, swept it over with the flashlight (one of those alarumed numbers that emits a high-pitched whine when you remove it from its holster on the wall). No luck. My phone was still AWOL.

I next headed to Exit, that shady hole of sin and slander, but it was closed. Undaunted, I made plans to head back later.

Later: It wasn't there either.

I had given up. I feared I would never see my Cellular Companion again.

Fast-forward to Tuesday night, when an event most strange and miraculous occurred:

My phone magically turned itself back on.

Or actually, someone had found it, charged it and turned it on. I found this out when Friend Cody tried to call me on Tuesday, apparently forgetting that I had lost my cell phone, and was answered by a gravelly-voiced Korean who did not speak word one of English. We attempted to have Friend Joe (a bilinguist) call him, but he didn't answer.

The next day, I had Jun, one of my Korean coworkers, call him, but again he didn't answer. I called him myself at night and was able to talk to him, but my limited Korean didn't get far past "this are my cell phone? (sic)" and "where is you be? (sic)," and I couldn't get most of his responses.

I had given up. I feared I would never see my Cellular Companion again.

Fast-forward to Friday night, when an event most strange and miraculous occurred:

I was well into those 7 cold reasons for getting through the day mentioned in my last post, when I got an IM from Friend John explaining that Friend Ian had called him, hoping to get passed through to me. I also happened to be logged in to facebook, where Friend Ian did get hold of me. He told me he had called my phone, also forgetting that I had lost it, and chatted a bit with the Korean fella. He said the guy worked at a restaurant called "Hangribossam" which was he believed to be quite near my apartment. The name sounded familiar, but I was 85% I had never patronized this restaurant, and 95% sure I didn't go there on Friday night.

Friend Ian said he would try to set up a phone hand-off with the gentleman, so he asked me what the name of my building was. I answered, to the best of my knowledge, truthfully: "Soho Ville."

He called the other guy, and came back to facebook laughing.

The Man Who Found My Cell Phone Lives In My Building

Of all the buildings in Suji, of all the places that people live who could have found my phone, the guy who found it lives right in my goshdarn building.

So I walked upstairs, knocked on 404, and he handed over my cell phone, usb memory stick intact. I thanked him profusely. I think I owe him a beer, or some bread, or something.

End of story.