Witness

A get a phone call.  "Hello?" I answer.

"Is this Mark Siggers?"

"It is."

"Can you speak Korean?"

"A little."

"How much?"

This is a bit of a departure from the usual. Usually they either hang-up or babble a stream of incomprehensible Korean.   It is a little hard to answer quantitatively.  Saying the following in Korean is my answer.

"Well," I say.  "If you keep talking slowly like this, I'll probably do okay until you get to some hard words. From there I'll understand about half of what you say. But I'll pretend to understand it all, unless you ask me direct questions, in which case, I will likely hang up."

"Okay.  I'm Detective Kim Blah Blah from the North Daegu Police department." he says slowly, throwing in English translations of some words, "I would like to get a witness statement from you about..."

I probably shouldn't say here what it is about.   But this is both cool and little bit scary. I  start taking it more seriously.   Maybe I won't talk anymore about pretending anything. Police is real life.  Mathematicians don't always get involved in real life.  I mean, we get real family shit, but we don't get a lot of police stuff.  I wonder if I should get a gun.  I probably won't need it for a witness statement.  But I should practice drawing a gun, just to be safe.  I'm not sure if guns are legal.  Maybe just some brass knuckles.

"When would you be available to come to the station?"

"If it is next week, Tuesday is best.  In the morning if possible."

"What day and time? Morning or afternoon?"

"Tuesday morning."

"Morning or afternoon?"

Something doesn't seem to be registering.  

"Tuesday morning would be best."

"I'll send you my phone number."

Hmm.  I'm not sure how it resolves anything, but it at least leaves the ball in his court. And that seems alright.  "Okay," I say. "Thanks."

"Bye."

"Bye."