::A Geek in Korea::

Outside my apartment complex has been a rotating set of trucks promoting Internet service providers. Each week, a different company stops by and tries to entice people to switch their service by promising them free stuff. This week was the service provider we actually used, and you didn’t anything free immediately by staying with the service. They let you sign up for a raffle and would give away prizes on their last day camped out in front of our apartment complex.

We showed up for the raffle along with around twenty or thirty other people. According to the man running the whole thing, the turn out was low enough that if everyone dropped their spouses name into the box, they’d still get to take home something. We did just that, as did everyone else in the crowd.

Some of the people had submitted serveral names of relatives. The only requirement as that they had to have a phone number, and that the person winning could only bring home one prize. I saw one couple that had dropped dozens of names into the raffle. The pregnant woman would shuffle around nervously as she would look at half the numbers, then she would give some of the numbers to her husband who was wearing a denim suit. If they needed to cheat at a free raffle that badly, they probably needed someone much more than we did.

Before the raffle started, we checked out the prizes. There was toilet paper, instant noodles, rice cookers, irons, microwaves, and a few other appliances up for grabs. My wife said, “I hope we win a microwave for my mom. We don’t need much else. As long as we don’t get instant noodles or that steam iron, I’ll be happy.”

I said, “It’s free stuff. Anything we walk away with is more than we had. No reason to complain.”

The raffle was set up so that you had to call out the numbers if you won. They did this so that no one complained it was rigged somehow. There was a volunteer that called out the first number, then when a winner came up to take their prize, they kept grabbing numbers till someone won.

My wife’s number got called for the third or fourth prize. She had won a large box of individually wrapped packets of instant noodles. She laughed and went up to call out numbers. Eventually she got to return to the group when the moved on to steam irons. We were 0 for 1 in our desired takings.

I won the second steam iron. 0 for 2! I went up to collect, then had to draw out numbers. The guy put a bullhorn to my face and told me to shout out the numbers. I paused, not because I didn’t want to speak Korean in front of a crowd, but because three fire trucks were blaring towards us with sirens and lights flashing. They parked right next to the raffle, and no one could hear me on the bullhorn calling out numbers because they were all worried their apartments were on fire. The raffle guy wouldn’t let me leave until the next winner was found, so I had to call out numbers while he tried to keep people’s attention.

Eventually, despite the chaos, someone claimed a prize and I was off the hook. I got to go home with our bundle of unwanted gifts. We’ll give the spicy noodles to my brother in law, and the steam iron is now “wedding present in waiting” for anyone that announces a date in the coming year. I said I didn’t want to complain about a free prize, but next I win a raffle I hope we get something we can use.