::A Geek in Korea::

Mother: This isn’t one of those trees where all the needles falls off, is it?
Tree Man: No, that’s them balsams.

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Mr. Parker: [to Mother] You know, Zudock just bought of those brand new green, plastic trees.
Tree Man: Oh no!
Mr. Parker: Darn thing looked like it was made of green pipe cleaners. Hee hee hee hee.
Mother: It’s a very nice tree.
Tree Man: [Quickly] I’ll thrown in some rope and tie it to your car for you.
Mr. Parker: You got a deal.
Tree Man: Deal.

This isn’t the season for Christmas trees, but the spirit of the conversation hold true. Today my wife and I went around the neighborhood to catch the last day of an air conditioner clearance sale that all the different manufacturers were throwing.

We stumbled upon a sale season we had no idea existed until last week. The LG store in my Mother-in-Law’s neighborhood had been remodeled, and we hadn’t been inside yet. We had nothing to do but kill time before Indiana Jones was showing. I peeked inside at the air conditioners while she looked at steam vacuum cleaners.

All of the old air conditioner units had heavy discounts as they were cleaning out the older models for more expensive, more energy efficient models with better designs and styles. There is something of a war going on between LG and Samsung at the moment feature wise, and the air conditioner models are rapidly evolving as a result. Models from a year or two ago look positively archaic, and the new models are as stylish as any other appliance in the house. The newer features are so ridiculously high tech, with TFT displays, built in air filters, and all sorts of gadgetry. You aren’t buying an air conditioner, but a full air processing and circulation system with beauty and features you didn’t know you couldn’t live without.

We passed on the models we saw, and were going to wait until next year, being more prudent than impulsive, but then my wife found out that the last day of a really nice sale was ending today. She had talked to someone at Emart that had knocked off a third from the price we had seen originally that got us thinking about buying. There was a chance that wasn’t even going to be the best deal we could find. If it was going to get purchased, the best time would be now, so we needed to consider it.

The pricing war and the discounts got our interest piqued. Also, since we are getting a multi-year loan to pay for the house, money had sort of turned imaginary. We have such a high debt relative to either of our pasts that now that it’s hard to comprehend it as “real” money. Sure, an air conditioner is expensive, but it’s all relative, and compared to the house, it’s down right cheap.

We headed out on our bikes to check local stores. We started at the appliance store Hi-Mart, then moved on to HomEver, and finally ended up back at Emart. Oddly enough, they had a remarkably good deal that couldn’t be beat. My wife is a tremendosly ruthless negotiator. She knows when she’s on the trial for a good deal, and she pulled the plug on two of the salespeople before we ended up settling on the unit we wanted. She got them to offer heavy discounts and even ended up with gift certificates on top of the store discounts. The in-store discounts we got will PAY for her steam vacuum, so she go what she wanted out of the deal too. I have no idea how she does it.

We settled on a model, then called my brother-in-law. He has an arragement with his car company, and a related credit card company. He gets a discount on his car payment if he has a minimum amount of purchases on his credit card each month. Seeing as he doesn’t spend money on anything, ever (like his sister), we were doing him a favor by letting this air conditioner sit on his card interest free for 6 months. We have the money to pay for the air conditioner set aside already, but he gets the credit for purchasing it. Win win. We’ll wire the money into his account before the interest comes due, and that’s how we’ll get the air conditioner installed in our new apartment. This will be my first apartment in Korea with an air conditioner, and I’m pretty excited by the idea of being able to sleep in summer comfortably.

We felt so smart getting a really good deal on the newest model of air conditioner, we didn’t really consider one of the logicistical aspects of the deal. Most apartments allow you to mount the fan unit outside of the veranda if you pay to have a professional install a special rack to hold it. We hadn’t even checked to see if our new apartment allowed for this arrangement.

They didn’t. We rode by the apartment. Not a SINGLE apartment had rack mounted air conditioner outside it’s house. Uh-oh. We really should have thought about that, but the giddiness of a new major appliance purchase, plus the fever of heavy discounts had blinded us. We had both had a feeling of buyers doubt the second after we had signed the contract, as if we had forgot something. This would have been “it”.

If it wasn’t possible to have a fan unit outside it would have been a big problem. We’d have to place the fan unit on our veranda and just open the window to blow out the hot air. This SUCKS (as well as blows), as we lose our veranda to dust. We’d have a noisy machine sitting inside our house making noise when we want to be cool at night too. One of my friends has this arrangement in his apartment and hates it. He can’t use his veranda for anything at all. We were even more concerned because Yoshi needs to be out on the veranda during the day when we’re not home, and it’d be dusty and awful. We couldn’t lose that much space. I was willing to cancel the air conditioner provisionally until we figured out a work around.

We talked to a security guard, who said that a few years back, an air conditioner fell and landed on the ground, destroying a tree. No one was killed, but it led to a ban being strictly enforced. He did mention that if we were close enough to one of the concrete overhangs that protected the steps of the apartment, we could put our air conditioner unit on top of that. No one complained or cared because it couldn’t fall. He said that was only possible for people on the second floor, and it’s not like that would be relevant to anyone, would it?

Wait! We’re on the second floor! We’re near stairs with a porch. YES! Our apartment was basically the only apartment with the option that DIDN’T already have an air conditioner setting on the roof already. SWEET. Blind luck delivers victory! We can have an air conditioner with no complications! Awesome.