Alright, I just signed up for a trial .Mac account. Among other wonderful benefits - and the main reason I signed up for this service at all - is the free gig of online storage, called an iDisk. I can store photos, addresses, webpages, and soundbytes on my virtual harddisk, and then publish them on my blog for all to see and hear. So tonight I am going to test this service by posting one of my favorite soundbytes recorded in Korea - the laundry lady.

Yes, the laundry lady. I know I've written about her in previous blog updates. Every morning at 7:30AM a woman comes storming down the halls in my apartment building yelling “SAYTAAAAAHHHH,” which translates to “Laundry” in English. Her approach is like that of a passing freight train at night. I can hear her in the distance, two or three floors below, around 7, the word 'saytah' invading my slumbering like a long-forgotten memory come back to haunt me. The volume picks up fifteen minutes later. When she reaches my floor, the distinct clump, clump, clump of her sneakers on the concrete begins to wake me from my rest, accompanied by her distinctive, plaintive call for people's dirty clothes. As she passes my window any semblence of sleep is blasted into bits by her singular call:

“SAAAAYYYTAAAAAHHHH!!!”

And then she passes, the doppler effect slowly lulling me back to sleep.

She collects her first batch of clothes at 7:30AM, wailing for people's laundry like a Dark Ages undertaker calling for the dead, and then at 9 she drops it off, her long, mournful wail reverberating down the cold hallways of dongsamjugong. It's like an alarm clock with an hour-and-a-half-long snooze bar. At first I hated her with a passion. I recorded her wailing with my minidisk player and played a practical joke on her one morning. I mounted my speakers in my window and waited for her to pass.

At 9AM sharp she approached my apartment, yelling 'saytah' as she passed each door on our floor. As she passed mine I hit 'play' on my iPod and an exact 'saytah' replica followed it's creator down the hallway. The footsteps stopped. The laundry lady turned around and walked back the way she came, double-time. For a few days she didn't return (I slept in for once). After a while I started feeling guilty, wondering if I made her self-conscience and depriving her of business on my floor through my rude interference. My fears were alleviated the next Monday when she returned, louder than ever.

Cut-and-paste the link below into a new browser window to go to my iDisk folder, then download and hear my daily wake-up call for yourself.

http://homepage.mac.com/fotonotes/FileSharing1.html