THE ANSWER IS 12
#241
Long Time, No See..
Welcome Back to the
Show...
10/30/2022
I returned to my home
of the past month and for the future nine lunar cycles to find five different
species of spiders in the toilet/shower half of my bathroom in this far western
corner of Nepal. I can conceive of no more appropriate way to reintroduce
myself to the fold of random online postings and to those who elect to spend
their time on the toilet reading them.
After years of neglect,
the time has come to resurrect The Answer
Is 12. Much has taken place since I last posted an official
non-book-related missive: I lost my father, met the love of my life, got
married, left Korea for China, bought a condo, found myself trapped in WLOTUS
due to everyone’s favorite pandemic, lost my father-in-law, lost my
grandmother-in-law, taught virtually in China from Oklahoma for two semesters,
discovered the miseries of substitute teaching, became a mystery/secret
shopper, and took a ELF posting in bowels of Western Nepal for ten months. That
more or less catches us up. I guess this is as good a time as any to dive into
how I came to find myself boarding the first of three flights whisking me off
to Kathmandu on September 1, 2022.
With the contract I had
at a Korean school in Shenyang, China ending in February 2020, Chairman Wife
and I had concluded that this would be an appropriate time for me to finally
pursue an old dream of mine to become an English Language Fellow. I applied in
the fall of 2019 and was interviewed over Skype in October. Passing the
interview, they later placed me into a pool of applicants for projects starting
in the fall of 2020.
My school held its
final day of class on January 11, 2020. Chairman Wife and I were to have 46
relaxing days together before I flew off to Oklahoma to await a posting or to
find a different job back in Shenyang. Chairman Wife was to visit for the
summer in time for her birthday and our sixth wedding anniversary. Our other
main goal was to see Roger Waters one more time before he retired.
Our friend, Mo, held an
incredibly fun birthday party for herself at a dog kennel on the southwest side
of town on January 19th. Rumblings of a serious strain of the flu or something were
emanating from the south, but didn’t mean much to us yet. Two days after Mo’s
party, China shut down the country to prevent the spread of this mysterious new
virus. Overnight, our little city of nine million people went into a lockdown,
only leaving convenience stores, groceries, pharmacies, and hospitals allowed
to remain open for business. Our apartment estate closed three of its four
gates so that its elderly security guards could check the temperatures of the
residents as they came and went. Additionally, entrance to estates was limited
to their residents.
While there was a short
run on supplies at our grocery stores, nothing looked dire at this point.
Chairman Wife couldn’t go to her office, so we were both free to spend every
waking moment together cooking, watching movies, talking, and just generally
enjoying each other’s company. The lockdown lifted two days before my flight on
February 26, which had been booked months ahead of time. My three closest
friends in town and I went out for dinner on the 24th, bouncing
around town to a few different restaurants. This took some doing as not all of
them were stocked to reopen. Chairman Wife and I had a lovely and quiet evening
out together on my final night in town, not know just how “final” it was to be.
She drove me to the
airport the next morning. After a long embrace with promises to meet again in
Oklahoma, I boarded my plane and bid my new permanent home, China, a fond
farewell.
What followed was what
will eventually be known as a two-year long asterisk for the vast majority of
humanity.
This looks like a
decent place to stop this issue. I am wrapping this up as my Malaysian Airlines
flight to Kuala Lumpur passes over Cambodia. A taxi driver will deliver me back
to my prison/home for the next eight months in Dhangadhi, Nepal about 24 hours
from now. My university’s classes resume the next day which will consume more
than a bit of my time in the coming week or two. Your next The Answer Is 12 will do its best to cover what little transpired
during my 2.5 years in Oklahoma will some of the most epically frustrating and
depressing moments in our nation’s history took place. The hope is to get to
why and how of Nepal in the issue following that one. Looking ahead, I would
like to revisit some of the many tales that went unwritten over the years that
I had ceased writing these missives in favor of working on Ninjalicious: The Fictional Autobiography of Richard Lichman and
its as-of-yet-incomplete sequel, Ninjalicious:
Crazy Corea.
