Tech Savy

Korea is very cool and modern and technically advanced. For example, Nicholas had to go away his first night for work and showed me his room key. It was just a piece of paper printed with a code on it. Amazing, right?

We are now completely keyless. To enter our apartment building you just need the code and to get into our apartment, you have another code or fingerprint access. Pretty cool.

Keyless entry

Toilet buttons

I am still trying to figure things out in our apartment. The toilets each have all sorts of buttons from seat warmers to a bidet option. When people visit, our apartment fills with all sorts of musical noises and we can press a button to see the video of our entrance downstairs. Then again when they press our door bell.  (much more than the typical ding-dong) To open the front door, you press a button first and it automatically unlocks it for you. Otherwise, it sets off an alarm. As you can guess, I have already set that alarm off. We also have a couple of radios in the wall in the bathroom and in the kitchen.

About a week or so ago, I decided to try and learn a bit about these little features in our apartment. While getting ready to jump in the shower, I thought it would be nice to have music from the radio and not my phone. I had already started the water to heat it up and then pressed the "ON" button. Nothing happened. So I pressed another button. This one made some sort of noise, so I figured I had turned the radio on and then continued to try and change the station. Within seconds of pressing the second button. I kept hearing all sorts of bells or music over the water, but not from the bathroom...

I, of course, ignored it for about 30 seconds while I still fumbled with the radio and then realized all the noise might be coming from the rest of the apartment and might need my attention. I turned off the water and thought all that noise was our doorbell and someone was downstairs.

My mind immediately thought of our furniture delivery that we were expecting a couple of days, but things here happen quicker and figured they showed up early. So I quickly got ready and pressed the button that I assumed was the one to let someone in the building... Then, all the noise stopped. I thought that I had figured out the intercom/door system pretty easily and gave myself a figurative pat on the back.

A couple minutes later, our doorman was ringing our apartment doorbell and I answered. He gave me a very kind smile, said something, waved and left...

Two thoughts ran through my head. One, he just told me the delivery men were coming up- what service for him to come up and let me know that :) Or two, and more likely, he was just checking to make sure I was OK and once seeing I wasn't harmed, left...

I ran back to the bathroom with a pit in my stomach and my phone in my hand to google-translate (Something I should have done before I pressed the buttons) the label next to the button- Yep. Not "ON" or Station Change. Nope. EMERGENCY.

The button I pressed in the living room to "let" someone in, a second EMERGENCY button.

Oh boy... Good thing our doorman is such a nice and understanding gentleman. Probably isn't the first time this has happened to him... Hope it's the last time for me. As they say, usually you learn more when you make a mistake. One word I am not going to forget anytime soon is 비상- Emergency :)