Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Corporal]

So what did YOU leave behind (things brought or purchased here, not stuff the apartment came with) for the foreign teacher replacing you? Huh?


I left:

a new toaster oven
a humidifier
plants
dishes and cutlery

Um, that's about it. Oh, and I gave the apartment a decent cleaning too even though I knew they were going to make an ajuma do it later again anyway.

[Qinella]

Just moved out last week, and left

- 10 boxes of mac and cheese
- other nonperishable food
- incense burner and incense
- extension cord
- Korean/English dictionaries
- two pocket phrasebooks
- some pants he said he liked that I, um... can't fit into.

[peppermint]

What I'm planning to leave( going soon)
all the bedding, towels and dishes I've bought (all left clean of course)
garbage can,
small table,
iron,
a few photo frames,
smoke detector
an alarm clock and a lamp (might give those away with stuff I'm selling though)
New light bulbs and stuff that I bought but didn't need
some non perishable food ( more than likely)

and if I have time, a map to the grocery store, the numbers for a good dentist, doc, travel agent, etc

at the office I'll leave the school supplies, handouts and games that go with the text, and a Korean- English dictionary

[HamuHamu]

A few months ago, left behind --

coffee maker
toaster oven
all dishes, pots pans, cutlery
loads of unopened non-perishable food (including lots of things bought or sent from home and hard to find here)
full bottles of shampoo conditioner and body wash in the shower
one of those clothes rack thingys
sofa
computer desk
two coffee tables
piles of freshly washed towels, quilts and bedsheets
a 1L sam-da-su bottle full of bek-won coins

Kicking myself now, because I had to go and buy pretty much all of that stuff recently for my new place, but I was going travelling for a few months between contracts and had no place to store anything -- only choice was to leave it behind..and hopefully make someone's new home a bit homier upon arrival.

Things I DIDN'T leave behind - all of which someone else has in the past left for ME when I moved into a new place:

Half-used crap in the fridge that would rot and no one would want anyway
Full garbage bags and/or recycling
Dirty laundry in the washing machine
Gobs of hair in the shower drain
Gobs of food in the kitchen drain
Dead flowers with mold growing in the water and on the stems
And, of course, unpaid bills

[Corporal]

[Unreal]

I left my guitar at my first place in '03. I was hoping to get it back and I talked the hagwon owner a month ago to see if it was still kicking around but it seems to have disappeared. Wasn't a great guitar but good for an occasional fix.

[JongnoGuru]

I've left two things behind that immediately come to mind, but not for my "replacements". What replacements? Who could possibly fill the Guru's stylish, mysterious, dangerous shoes? Especially when the left is slightly narrower than the right one is. No, these items were left for either the next tenant or the landlord.

Ceiling fan.

It was large, heavy and made of real wood and brass. It was imported, took a long time to arrive, and I paid too much for it. This was before such things were generally available in Korea, and years before you'd ever see one in an Itaewon bar. I even wondered if I was the first person in Korea since the end of the Japanese colonial era to own and install a ceiling fan. Sure seemed like it.

I installed it myself, and that was tricky, time-consuming, dirty business, because the panelled ceiling was ancient, weak and full of decades of dust and crud. I was worried it wouldn't support the weight of the fan, that it would come crashing down on someone's head, and I'd be liable for medical and reconstruction expenses. Once it was finally up, though, that fan looked just grand. Like it belonged there. It became integral. You could no longer imagine that room without a ceiling fan, nor with any ceiling fan but that one.

When the time came to move on, I couldn't decide whether to pull it down or leave it there. The new people moving in came to look at the place while I still lived there, and they really liked the ceiling fan. I could have told them then that it was my fan and I'd be taking it with me, but I hadn't decided at that point.

So it's moving day, things are typically chaotic and I completely forget about that fan. The next morning I go back to the old house to see if I'd left anything behind and say good-bye to my old home. I step inside and reflexively hit the wall switch, which starts the fan rotating. With the bare walls and floors, it's the only thing that catches the eye now. "Oh right!!! The ceiling fan!!" I went down and bought a beer from the little kagae, brought it back, and just lie on the floor staring up at the fan slowly spin spin spin, the sliding doors were open, sunny outdoors, warm breeze. No, I decided I wasn't going to pull the fan down. By then you could find ceiling fans in Korea, they were nothing special anymore. Uglier, new, cheap materials, but lighter and much cheaper.


Air conditioner.

Bought it used, it was a window-mounted model that precisely fit a purpose-built A/C window in that house. I didn't want to bore another hole in the next home just for that old, used A/C so I left it behind.

[Tiberious aka Sparkles]

I left behind a bookcase full of CD jewel cases. The discs would have been too much of a pain to ship home, so I bought a big Case Logic CD holder, tranferred my CDs into it, and left the cases behind. Man, the guy or gal who moved in after I left must have been pretty jazzed at first, thinking he/she had just inherited over 300 CDs.

Sparkles*_*

[HapKi]

When I've moved into a new apartment, the last thing I wanted is other peoples' used crap laying around.

Don't be so sure you're doing anyone a favor.

[the_beaver]

Moved a couple of times in Korea.

Left behind tables, fridges, televisions, an old computer or two, books (teaching and otherwise), cutlery -- basically anything not directly Star Wars related.

[Dan The Chainsawman]

[desultude]

As I said on the other "cheap" thread, we have a window in our building that is for give and take. I have put my share of clothes, shoes, jacket, and recently a pretty good suitcase on wheels. I have gotten spices, a cape, some pretty well used tee shirts (for cleaning ) and books. I have also left a lot of books.

Its cool because we have pretty small apartments, and all buy things that turn out to not be needed, this way the stuff stays in circulation and use. I've seen the same books come and go.

The bad news is that some people have loaded the area up with some pretty useless stuff when they have moved out.

And an occasional spare half a zucchini and other such stuff.

[Tiberious aka Sparkles]

[ajuma]

[Mills]

Someone left me their piss-ant collection, trained and everything... they would perform a parade every morning from the kitchen countertop to the bits of old food I found under the sink. The infestation was so bad I had to call Chuck Norris...