What's That Beeping, Creeping That I Hear . . . ?

(With deepest apologies to E.A. Poe)

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly sleeping, suddenly there came a beeping,
As of something gently creeping, creeping along my chamber floor.

No, I won't go any farther with this, but the beeping that pierced my nights for the past two days did nearly inspire a Homeric epic.  That beeping, beeping, beeping continued nearly every five minutes through-out the entire night!  What a way to be welcomed into your new apartment, though, I must say, the apartment that I've been provided this time is a great improvement over little (did I say little) studio apartment last year.

What could it be?  Was it the first faint taunts of a fire alarm or, maybe worse, a carbon-monoxide alarm that I had inadvertently activated by using the gas cook stove incorrectly?  Was it coming from the radiant heating system that warms my floors?  Was it my water heater?  Had I forgotten to turn it off?  I looked and looked, tried this and tried that, and I just couldn't get that beeping to STOP!

My only recourse was to go to bed and pack a pillow over my ears.  Thankfully I was still so exhausted from the re-ordering of my circadian rhythm that I was able to sleep though the beeping, beeping -- at least for a few hours at a time.  Yet, each time I awoke, I waiting anxiously, listening, hoping, and then the silence of the night was fractured again with that incessant BEEPING!

I just can't go through another day with this beeping.  I'll have to move into my office until I can get someone who knows how to make it stop.  Or, is it just in my head?  I'm I just imagining this or is it really real??  There's only one way for me to find out.  The way that any good foreign faculty member at Handong begins his search for true knowledge.

I must call my TA!  Now, as any regular reader of these postings might think, it would be a very difficult task for me to find someone who might have the potential to measure up to Mr. Mok.  He was my most excellent TA who served me faithfully during my two semesters as a visiting professor here in 2009-2010.  Now, upon my return to Handong, though, I did not have to look for a replacement -- for my new TA came to me. 

Ms. Han was the top student in my Legal Argumentation class last year.  She also was the driving-force organizing and directing the Law & Advocacy study group with whom I served as a faculty sponsor.  Over the past winter break, she and two other top law students from Handong traveled to the Netherlands for a research project at The Hague and the University of Utrecht.  A more outstanding student I could not find if I had tried.

So, I placed a call to Ms. Han asking her to investigate the piercing beeping that was pervading my apartment.  With just one short telephone call (in Korean) to the University's Housing Authority, she advised me that the beeping was a signal that the batteries powering the igniter for my gas stovetop were soon to lose power and needed to be replaced.  Amazing, all that needed to be done was to remove the old batteries from the back of my stovetop (they were hidden back there) and replace them with new.

Relief!  No more beeping, beeping throughout the night.  It is such a good thing to have an excellent TA!