 Call me paranoid but airports always make me nervous. There is the ever-present fear that you might have forgotten something. That you might be late. That you might miss your flight having to go through yet another security checkpoint. And there was that one time when I was 19 when I was held in an interrogation room in Incheon International Airport before my flight.
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 When it comes to politics you can never judge a book by its cover and 20-year-old Sam Purchas is a great example why. Standing at a lanky 6 foot 3 and dressed in a bright flowery suit that looks like a Coachella attendee’s LSD fuelled vision of ‘smart casual’, Sam looks more like a psychedelic hippie than a Randian right-winger. When he’s not singing bass in a Barbershop Quartet, or playing Doctor Who in this year’s Capping Show, Sam serves as the president of Young ACT at Otago.
 You’ve made it. After three years subsisting on a diet of Mi Goreng noodles, the cheeky seven-dollar fat bird, and too much caffeine, you’ve proven that you’re ready to take your place in the world with a fancy piece of paper, and a crippling student loan. You’ve had some great times, some horrific times, and some half formed blurry ones pieced together the next day from your snap story. Now what?
 Time is a wheel. Being someone of Korean descent who represents New Zealand on the JET Programme (Japanese Exchange and Teaching meant to improve international relations), living in Japan is a surreal experience. On one hand, their ancestors conquered mine and instituted an oppressive police state in the 20th century, doing things like gunning down school children for singing the national anthem in public. On the other hand, their descendants’ taxes now pay my salary and I teach their children’s children English in an effort to show them the international world. I try not to get caught up in ancestral grudges.
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IsaacBorn somewhere between the old world of Korea and the new world of New Zealand Isaac is an award winning writer, teacher on the JET Program, and nomad currently residing in Japan. Archives
June 2018
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