Yun Hwan Chae and what his existence means to the human kind

358502 things to do. 

I was going through an article about ADD adults the week before the last as part of my assignment and I realized the words actually had a VERY familiar tone to it.

The symptoms were:

“ADD adults have inability to sustain attention on tasks or activities”

Meh.

“T have a greater tendency to lose/misplace things, especially wallets..”

Hmmm I see

“..and phones”

Wait a minute..

“Often talks excessively”

“Gets up frequently to walk or run around”

“Disorganized”

“Procrastinates”

“Absent Minded”

Am I really an ADD patient? Anyone who has come close to knowing me will tell you that if each one of the above had a box right next to them, they wouldn’t have given second thoughts on ticking them up if they somehow were to describe me. I know many people would love to pay to do so just to annoy me. But I say, blame it on the genes. My family has hilarious incidents where the term “Absent Mindedness” has been epitomized, and as part of the Maskey family, I am no exception.

What about the others you ask? Well, that’s a major headache. When I am in this sort of quarter life crisis, I usually seek out help from my friends who go through similar quarter life crisis themselves, and the first person’s name to pop out was Yun Hwan Che.

“Dude. I think I have ADD”

“HAHAHAHAHA”

“Seriously, I went over these symptoms and they really speak out to me. As if I was half-expecting the next symptom to be has a name starting with the letter A”

“You wanna know what I think of ADD? It’s just an excuse. Its just an excuse for people to blame their weaknesses on a medical condition instead of actually proactively working on to solve it”

That was all I needed to hear.

So who's Yun?

Fresh breath of air:

The first time I met Yun was at Quill’s Membership Training. He was early that day, sitting on the couch, working on his overdue article when I suddenly show up.

He looked at me and said: “Hey man, I am Yun from Bangladesh!” A Korean who lived in Bangladesh. Fantastic. I knew that he went through almost the same shit I went through back home and there was this immediate feeling of closeness. We could even talk about Jim Morrison, which at that point in time, was simply impossible topic to talk about to natives.

Getting to know him:

There is only one proper way to socialize in Korea: Drinking. And that’s what we did. I remember we usually ended up on the floor trying to beat the shit out of each other after downing potent mix of soju, mehwasu and drinks that we didn’t know existed. The more we did so, the better got to know each other. We tended to get along just fine the next day.

The better Editor In Chief:

Although, in our time, there was much talk of Le Boss being the better editor chief, I thought Yun surprisingly did a better job. For one, he earnestly went about editing every other article and for second, he brought about a level of consistency that was lacking in previous issues (even if it means consistently shitty cover pictures). He let me handle my section with much freedom which really helped to bring forth some creative ideas that we both wanted to experiment with the magazine. Having to work with Le Boss much closer now, I can see having low-self ego and having absolutely no superior complex can become an asset if you want to have a better, longer working relationship.

A better human?

Yun is not without difficulties. I hate when he says “You don’t understand me” at times when there’s nothing really to understand or when he calls you in to pick him up but says he does not know where he is but as a person, and as a friend, he is someone I wouldn’t want to lose. He honestly takes your problem as his own, and genuinely tries to help out. He listens. He gives back his honest opinions which make you a better person. He covers for you, he looks out for you. The lazy sucker.  All he asks in return is friendship.

Gotta go bid him farewell now before he picks up the gun and gets sent to the DMZ  

If you are reading this, which you probably won’t, don’t get yourself killed.