A gloomy meeting

"Oh! I feel bad. I'm a person who is treated well in Seoul. What's wrong with New York?" "You came to New York for a sabbatical year, so the people who treat you well is resting and relaxing." I couldn't stand my mouth either, so I said bitterly at acquaintance's complains.

I met an acquaintance that became a professor in Seoul after earning a degree in New York. She kept complaining about her hospitality in New York, because she is getting accustomed to social hospitality in Korea.

I understand if she hasn’t studied in New York before, but she already knows the life style here and how to treat people each other. If you go to Rome, don't you think you have to follow the Roman style?

Our relationship is so different from each other that it is not the same as before. I'm run over by frequent visitors from here and there. They call me after coming to New York for sabbatical year and summer vacation. "Why? Didn't you call me when you came to Seoul?" They are good at that word. They brag about will treated me when I go to Seoul, but when I contact them, they say they were on a trip abroad.

A long time ago, our couple lived a large studio with a roommate in Grand Street, Manhattan. We got a graduate degree but couldn't find a decent job. It is a worthless diploma. We have to keep a living, so we sold Blouses on Broadway and the Canal Street section. Our roommate sold fried rolls of shrimp on a silver hot dog cart on the street in front of Chrysler Building.

The three of us used to face-to-face, flirting and counting money in the evening. On a good sales day, we went to the neighboring Chinatown and talked about the episode of the day, eating another plate of vegetable over my usual food. Although it was a poor life, the passion for life was as hot as the midsummer sun.

An African-American who bought a roll of shrimp sold by a roommate complained that there was no shrimp even if he ate half of it. “Keep eating. The shrimp will come out,” the roommate said to his customer. We used to grab our belly and roll our feet and laugh. It's a grumble that starts from too small a shrimp. 

Are we really can't gleaned back to the freshness of those days?