Argh!

That, dear readers, is a title of frustration. Because as much as Korea does some things very well (assigned seats in movie theaters and little umbrella baggies, not to mention no tipping in restaurants) there are a few things they do very, very badly. Utilizing drying machines is one of them. Odd that in the land of a thousand dry cleaners it's nearly impossible to find a decent dryer. The dryer in my apartment building takes about an hour to run through its cycle, and when finished has transformed your laundry from cold, wet clothes into...slightly less cold, equally wet clothes. The dryer is piss-poor.

I mentioned this to a friend a few weeks ago, and she told me that few people here actually use automatic dryers. They use washing machines, but hang most of the clothes to dry. A lawyer here told me this is a vestige of the belief that people got energy from the sun; hanging laundry out to dry was a way to capture some of this energy. This sounds fine and good if you've got lots of drying racks and don't care about your clothes being soft, but if you're me and neither of the above conditions apply, well, it kind of sucks. Suffice it to say that I did laundry yesterday, and now socks, underwear and t-shirts are hanging from every conceivable chair, doorknob and closet in my small studio apartment.