Jess arrived in Seoul at 1am on Monday. The rest of her travel was very uneventful. Jiyong did not show up for the flight as he promised. Jess barely spoke to anyone else in her business class during the flight but she managed to enjoy the flight nonetheless. She watched a movie, got some work done and got a lot of sleep. However, she made a mistake of sleeping through the first half of the flight for which she was cursing herself now. It was middle of the night in Seoul and she was certain that jetlag and her nap in the airplane would make sure she would not be getting any sleep until the following morning. So instead of rushing through the airport like the rest of the travelers hurrying to catch some of the good night sleep they had left for the night, she slowed down and took time in admiring the novelty of everything that surrounded her.

Jess still couldn’t believe this would be her life for the following two years. She had traveled abroad before and had been in Asia a lot, especially in China which she now realized was very different from South Korea. China was definitely less developed and poorer, but Jess felt it was also more honest. Standing in the middle of Incheon airport, Jess admired the glossy and flashy colorfulness around her contemplating how Koreans took cute to a whole new level of vanity and she suddenly felt lonely in a way China had never made her feel. But then again, maybe it was just the homesickness kicking in. In China she always knew it would never be a long-term thing, three weeks at most. Seoul was going to be different, it was going to be for real. She picked up a cup of coffee and some sushi at a night stand on her way out. Forty-five minutes later she was climbing out of taxi that brought her to the serviced apartment compound in Hannam-dong district she selected on her pre-visit a month earlier.

She was let in and helped to the door by a night porter. She liked her new apartment, it was the second apartment she saw on her house hunt and she was immediately swept away by it. It was the nicest apartment she had ever lived in by all means. Light and airy, modern but cozy, she liked everything about it. Jess opened curtains in her living room and stood for a while in front of her floor to ceiling windows opening to a magnificent view of Seoul at night. Her workplace was just across the river in Gangnam-gu, in one of the tall buildings irregularly oscillating horizon. There must have been smog in the air, because the city looked so fairy-tale like with the night air luminescing over it.

Jess ate her sushi and called her mother. Her parents were worrying already. She had forgotten to tell them about the flight delay, so she was 12 hours late with her call for which she was scolded mercilessly. It was a good thing that her father had already checked on her flight schedule and had quieted some nerve down. Jess was very close with her mother, she could even call her best friend, her main confidante, most of the time involuntarily on Jess’s side. Sarah was one of those lovely, bubbly women whose only flaw was their strong need to stay informed. She would be insulted and hurt any time Jess tried to keep a secret from her mother. And she knew Jess so well, she could always tell when her daughter dared to keep something from her. ‘It would be refreshing experience to live so far away from them’, Jess thought to herself and instantly felt ashamed of it. Struck by guilt she spent extra five minutes chatting her parents up and reassuring them that she was still thrilled about moving to Seoul and that everything was going to be fine. Along those lines she managed to not mention anything about the last party she had in London.

When she finally hung up, the clock showed 3am. Jess took shower and climbed in her new bed laid with crispy new white linen. She wasn’t sleepy, but she also didn’t feel like doing anything. Lying down in bed felt like the best idea among the given options.

The following morning, she was in the office at 9am. After a short meeting with the office’s general manager, he introduced Jess to the whole team: forty to fifty young people as far as she could tell. Everyone else except her and the head of marketing whom she didn’t get to meet that day was Korean. General manager who looked to be closer to forty years old, was definitely the oldest in the crowd. His name was Park Dae Suk, but he preferred being called Dan. Dan’s assistant Lily who was a chatty young girl explained that in other Korean companies people do not normally call each other by first names, especially their bosses, but Dan was educated in Northern America, so he was promoting western corporate culture here in Commandor as well. Thirty minutes into the talk Jess realized that Lily was giving her a short introduction into Korean business etiquette with helpful references to good literature and websites for more information, if needed.