Tuesday, November 07, 2006

Let the countdown begin!
My airline tickets arrived via snail mail today and my passport freshly stamped with a Korean visa the day before. It came with this excellent map of S. Korea with details of the major metropolitan areas.

I have already experienced my first challenge of the language barrier. While working with the travel agent, he (a Korean based out of Chicago) was going to email me my flight itinerary. I started to spell out my email address over the phone. asdf_ghkl@ When I got to the 'underscore' I was at a loss. It was a word unfamiliar to him and I don't think Yahoo would have recognized the symbol spelled out. We agreed on snail mail and after verbal confirmation he dropped my tickets off with the U.S. Postal Service. On the bright side, I did get signed up for the Asiana Airlines frequent flyer program. If Delta insists on messing with the frequent flyer program then I'll just switch to Asiana.

The lady at the Korean Consulate in Seattle also had less than perfect English but the language barrier there was actually a benefit as she sent me the map (see above) free of charge.

Don't misunderstand me...the language barrier is mostly my responsibility and so I've invested in a book and language tapes.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

way to be on top of technology and be mr. blogger. the question is, how many of your friends and family will be technology-literate enough to log on and view your posts? i commend you on your stated goal of daily updates.