30 days and counting

i'm playing a little game here at kosin, perhaps one might even call it a bit of a social experiment. see, on august 1st i decided to join the fitness center on campus and paid the membership fee for one month. obviously, my membership ran out and i was due to pay again on the first of september. however, today is the 30th and i've yet to pay any more money. each time i go in there i'm prepared to renew my membership if they would only ask me to. it's not as if i slip in the back door either. i walk right up to the counter and smile, and the person behind the counter hands me a key to a locker in the locker room. never do the workers say anything but "hi," and usually they don't even say that.

i'm not really sure why they don't make me pay. perhaps the workers are trying to be friendly to me since i'm a foreigner. or is it because i'm a professor?--even more, a foreign professor? or perhaps they don't want to speak in english (i know they can speak at least a little because one was my student last year and english is a required subject at kosin). or maybe they don't know that i speak a little korean. or is it that they are just really bad at their jobs? no--i got it; they're afraid they'll make me angry and cause me to employ my now bulging biceps to break their small korean bodies into even smaller pieces. and then again, maybe not. regardless, i figure that as long as they are willing to offer use of the facilities to me for free, i'll continue taking advantage of that until they make some effort to make me pay for it.