LATENIGHT - KOREA

Thursday, January 29, 2004

Photo from this past autumn.

It's really hard to know what is true and what is not. Yesterday, I asked about the package and my school still said that they knew nothing about anything.

I decided that no matter what was happening, I should call my embassy and make an inquiry into getting an emergency passport. Such a document is only good for one trip but since I will be staying put in Canada for a while, that's fine by me. The embassy also took the phone numbers/case numbers/etc. relevant to my situation and I think they made some calls of their own which may have sped things up.

Bouncing right along, while I was on the phone with the embassy, Yeji got a call back from Immigration. It turns out that they never mailed the package at all, as they had said the day before. This time, they said that they were holding my passport until my school furnished the proper form, and that my school had been notified.

So after touching base on this-- Yeji's help being the best I could ever hope for-- I called back my school. The girl who "knew nothing" admitted that there had been two phone calls to the school already. They may have just occurred recently, she didn't say. I suspect one was the embassy and that may have been the motivation to get things done. Still, there was a problem. For some reason, the school needed to get a letter signed by Mr. Park now, who was the former owner (and founder) of our school, until selling it last July to the new owners. I was given a new promise that things would be settled by the weekend.

That night the stress was becoming rather evident. Poor Yeji has had to put up with a lot, and has assisted me where no one else could... but the level of ineptitude and subversion on the part of others has made this whole thing into a nightmare. It's problem after problem. The funny thing is that the one thing that broke the tension, while we were speaking, was another problem. Completely unrelated to all of this-- the hot water shut off again. I think we could have either cried or laughed... so we laughed.

Now things seem better today.

The hot water was temporarily fixed, but at the expense of the ondul heating system. They must have disconnected one furnace to the other in order to solve the hot water problem. The floor's cold now, so it's anyone's guess when that will be fixed-- but it's much easier to deal with a chilly place than the prospect of cold showers while you're working morning duty.

As for the passport, I asked again after class today. I was told that the forms had been prepared and that the desk manager had already left for Immigration with them an hour previous. I'm now expecting a call by the end of the afternoon to state that everything is handled and that my passport and alien card will be at the school when I arrive tomorrow.

Now it's back to confirming my ticket booking, filing for my pension, and having a little talk with the Yongsan Police regarding corrupt bar owners.

Tuesday, January 27, 2004

Samyupsal... Mmmm.

It's Tuesday night. I'm hungry. I haven't eaten supper yet but I am about to as soon as I make this post. The above picture is of typical Korean restaurant fare and I can certify that it is very delicious. Tonight's menu however is a package of Our Compliments Creamy Parmesan Pasta, courtesy of my final care package, which arrived today.

"Badges... we don't need no stinking badges..."
To fill you in, Yeji was able to partially tracked down my passport and Alien card, so that's the good news. It turns out that Immigration decided not to send the package to me after all. Instead, they've sent them to my school. Now I certainly don't like the idea of anybody having my passport other than myself and I am going to predict right now that it's going to result in problems.

The reason it went to my school is that the forms we submitted for my visa were unsatisfactory. Due to the change in ownership of the school, Immigration is returning the application, with my passport unstamped and my new visa unissued. They need the new business registration form, and my school was trying to bluff them out by sending the old one. Why the school couldn't send a new one was never explained to me. It would seem like a natural thing to do, yet nobody ever seems to do things the simple way here.

So I have concerns. On the surface, the course of action is to take the forms back to Immigration, with the proper business registration attached. Worst case scenarios are rampant in my mind, however. Even if the paperwork is refiled, it's quite probable that Immigration would be a week late getting it processed again (that's been the standard so far). If that occurs, I would be in the strange position of having my yearlong work visa issued on my last day of work. No matter how odd that sounds, that would be the best way to handle this and I will encourage my school to follow this route... even if it means I may be without my passport until as little as a week before I leave the country.

The worst worst case scenario would be that Immigration demands an overstay fine because I have not successfully been granted a visa. I was told that this amounts to 100,000 Won a day (told to me by an Immigration officer at Incheon the last time my school forced me into an overstay situation through lack of promptness). That would mean that I already owe about 1.8 Million Won ($2000 CAD). Since my school is contractually obligated to pay this, any increasing fines would be a reason for them to turf me out immediately... as in tomorrow even. My school certainly wouldn't want to pay thousands of dollars for an employee that isn't going to be working there in two weeks.

I have to stay on my guard now. I have to take charge of the passport situation and make sure that nobody holds me hostage here. If it's still in my school's possession by the end of this week, I will have to report it to my embassy as a theft/unlawful confiscation so that I can immediately begin the process of acquiring a replacement/emergency visa to get me out of here by the end of February. I do believe that Immigration mailed it, so if my school denies that they have it, I will consider that an impending blackmail situation and react accordingly.

The second thing I have to be wary of is my school telling me that everything has been handled and that it's all fine. I've heard that phrase so many times in the last three years that, with just the first few words, I can feel a Sword of Damocles parting my hair. If I hear it this time, I will be inclined to assume that nothing has been done at all... and that when I arrive at Incheon airport and go through Immigration, I will likely be slapped with a cumulative fine of about $5k for overstay or be thrown in jail. I can completely see that happening.

In combination with the credit card problems, I am starting to get the impression that making money in Korea is like fool's gold. You can earn it, save it, and even transfer it. But by the time you leave the country for good, it vanishes as if it never existed at all.

A rare speck of fortune
There is one glint of luck however. For those of you close to me, I'll let you know over the phone or email... but I've got a great prospect for income set to kick off in April. I got some very good news last night from a future client of sorts, and I hope this is the start of some kind of karmic rebound/retribution.

ADDENDUM: Stop the presses! I just had a brainstorm. If I tear up my application for my useless Multiple Entry Visa, I will no longer have to surrender my passport to Immigration. I'll only need to leave my Alien Registration Card with them-- and provided I write down the number on that card, I can still claim my pension money once I am back in Canada. Who the hell cares if they give the card back to me or not? At least I have the receipt that says they are working on my visa and that should be just as good to get me through Immigration. There's still the question of the fine that I may have to work around... but dare I smell a subtle victory?

Saturday, January 24, 2004

Park near home.

Happy Seolnal, everyone.

It's the Lunar New Year again. The last few days have been a nice break. Seolnal is a three-day holiday and this year it started on Wednesday. Together with the usual weekend, that's made for a five-day vacation. It's been nice to have time to get my mind in order and focused on the road ahead.

Mostly I've kept close to home, but Yeji and I visited the Hyundai Art Gallery in Gwanghwamoon yesterday. Korean artist, Kim Young Hee was featured (and present, giving autographs), who specializes in paper dolls set in poses to depict simple and wonderful elements of Korean life. Afterwards, we moved over to Insadong where we did some shopping for last minute mementos of Korea, before going to Canada next month. Yeji picked up all the instruments and supplies to begin practicing traditional Caligraphy. I was shopping for antiques which were mostly out of my price range. I did see one thing that would have made an interesting conversation piece, for only 90,000 Won. I won't say exactly what it was but if you could imagine something that is very cliche among Asian artifacts, is roughly 11 inches long, and made of Jade. It's original purpose is highly gender-specific, and even though it was very old, I have no idea if it was ever used. Now guess what it is.

I eventually found *almost* what I was looking for, just slightly smaller. I had hoped to pick up some wooden temple dogs to decorate my future library (there is a bigger, stone version in the picture of the last post). The foot-high ones all ran about 300,000 Won but I managed to find a pair on the street, maybe 6 inches high, for 40,000 Won (talked down from 50,000). They're not big, but they're about a hundred years old, and the carver was skilled enough to actually carve the sphere into the mouth, which moves around like a pinball. I'm sure they're worth more than I paid, and they'll make a nice addition to my decor. The original purpose of the dogs was to scare away evil spirits from temples, and I hope to put them to good use in my "occult" section.

With the weather being quite cold, and my wallet beginning to thin, we followed some back alleys and found one of the few open restaurants, where we went in to warm up. The lady there was very friendly and even gave us some extra side dishes she had been cooking for her family. Who knows, we may have been her only customers all day. Despite the chill, it was a good time.

Today is the usual cleaning day. There's no laundry however. An announcement came on to say that the weather was too cold and the pipes for draining the laundry water were flooded and frozen. Hopefully it will warm up tomorrow.

Saturday, January 17, 2004

At a temple near Ehwa.

Just a very short post to keep you all updated on my misadventures. It's snowing today-- very wet and dismal flurries. I made it to Immigration up at Mokdong and sat there for an hour and a half while they tried to find my passport. They still haven't found it but promised they'd send it out as soon as they did. With the holiday starting next Wednesday, it might be a week and a half before I get it (or longer if it has to be replaced). There really isn't any time for this sort of mix up.

And of course, the trips to the police and to the pension board are nixed until the passport and alien card are returned to me. Actually, the whole process of me leaving the country will be a lot more difficult if they don't turn up.

Friday, January 16, 2004

Seoul.

Days until the end of this blog: T- 30

How's that headline grab you? I tell you that the news which resulted in the above headline certainly caused a ripple today. Brace yourselves. I'm leaving Korea.

The staff was all smiles today when they asked me to stay after class for a few minutes. It turns out that the new management had a meeting and they've decided that they don't want to employ two foreign teachers after all. Their plan is to cut back on staff and increase the workload of the remaining teachers. Now as far as I know, both Karl and I have similar prohibitions in our contract against working Saturdays or unagreed to overtime. The difference, I'm more expensive and Karl, being new, will be easier to bully.

So with that, I finish my employment with Prep School as of the end of the month. Since no one is taking over my contract and the lease on the apartment goes until the end of next month, I have been told I have a couple of weeks leeway afterward to get things sorted out. That gives me almost a month before I will hop a plane back to the frigid Canadian wilderness, land of the beavers, furtrading polyglots, and Better Business Bureaus. I will also be giving Yeji a temporary kiss good bye, fittingly, on Valentine's Day... or very close to it. There's a "Friday the 13th" coming up around then too. I'll know better which day will be the one, once the ticket's been reserved. She's going to stay a little while longer and take care of a few things on this end. I'll head to Canada and get things set up on that end. With luck, we'll reunite around April.

Molly's fate is a bit more precarious. The time span may not be long enough to get everything organized for importing a rabbit to Canada. I've sent off emails and requested the proper forms. Canada would also require him to have a quarantine area set up and that means I need cooperation on the other end.

Also on the rapidly filling dayplanner will be a trip to the National Pension Board. I am hoping that I can claim three years of pension payments. People seem to indicate this is not a problem although I have no idea if my previous employers ever actually paid into it or if they just subtracted it. I bet I'll be in for a few surprises once I get there and find out what my payment records look like. Ideally, the rate of pension deductions is 4.5% of my salary. Over three years, that adds up to a nice feather for my nest.

In fact, it'll even make up for the money I envision losing due to that visa scam. We're still going to see the police tomorrow, but now I certainly don't have the luxury to wait around for a court case to be scheduled and decided. Visa's not been great either. There's a time limit to claims of about 90 days. Considering that it took almost two months for the surprise charges to show up on the bill, and then Visa sent the documentation by surface mail... ugh. I eventually got most of the stuff by getting them to fax it. We'll see what the police say and there is still the chance that it could be resolved... though it's a problem that's being drowned out by other necessities right now.

Tomorrow I'm also off to Immigration to pick up my recently renewed E-2 Visa. Ironic isn't it? They have my passport (so that they could issue me a multiple entry permit that I am NEVER going to use) and they also are fixing the address on my Alien Registration Card (even though I am only going to be living there for two more weeks). I need the Alien card to claim the pension money, so it's not going to be completely useless.

One the bright side, my school finally paid me my bonus-- and for Seolnal, they gave me three pet King Crabs! I suspect they are meant to be eaten, but when I opened the box, not only were they uncooked, but they were opening their mouths in a pathetic fashion and the one on top was waving and snapping his claw.

This school never ceases to surprise me.

Oh wait... they will. They'll cease next month.

I'm going home.

Sunday, January 11, 2004

Colder days in Seoul.

It's Sunday now, but the past week was really a time to take care of business. The main reason for this was that Friday marked my last day of my second contract with this school. The new contract will begin in force on Monday and that of course meant it was visa renewal time (as I posted before). Now I've been trying to get this done for 3 weeks but it was only on Thursday that I finally got the proper forms (and not without a few unspecified problems I won't get into, either.) The manager at school, for some silly reason, had been fighting tooth and nail against doing his job and getting the papers notarized for me. Finally, as the deadline was looming, the owner stepped in and he went. But... to try and make amends, or else to betray his ignorance further, he took what he had to Immigration himself. This must have been met by a rather stupid look (much like the look they gave me when I showed up without all my paper work at the end of December).

Taking the forms myself on Thursday, I got them submitted. I should be able to pick up my things next week which I hope will be my last ever trip to Mokdong.

... And my year end bonus isn't in yet. I was promised it last week but it didn't show up. To top matters off, a bank machine error left me scrambling to get 100,000 Won replaced. The machine subtracted the money but instead of giving me the cash, it spit out a slip marked "error" instead. Lots of little things like these piled up this week.

What is it with the word, "visa"?
The credit card matter still isn't settled. I'm awaiting the receipts in the mail, and then should be taking them down to the police station. Another foreigner sent us an email detailing a similar experience at the same bar. In it he said that numerous people had suffered the same fate there. Without accusing the bar itself, he also mentioned that there are rumours of bars using the "date rape drug" to facilitate this kind of theft. I have to wonder if this happened to me, considering that I can't remember anything after a certain point of the evening... and I was in such a terrible condition that I lost my eyeglasses, presumably at the same time and possibly as a way to get me to unknowingly sign the bill (?). In one case, the bar I went to had grossly overcharged a Korean instead of a foreigner. The Korean was able to get them shut down for three months, and I expect get his money back. There was no word of whether any foreigners had been successful by going through the police, but perhaps with Yeji's help, my luck might be better.

Other matters...
Things have been so busy. Ever since Christmas, I still haven't really had time to get back on my feet and into a routine. The financial matters, the visa matters, the shift to daytime classes... they've all contributed. I'm even having a devil of a time getting motivated to do cartoons. I've had to switch to afternoons as a work period for my art (since I am too tired to stay up all night with my classes starting 9am each day.) There's also been so very little news. Most of the reporters covering local issues were on holidays over Christmas and New Years. That's created a lull which is only now beginning to pick up. Thanks to Colin, I was able to find a good topic for Friday though. You can see the cartoon and writeup on Bill C24 over at IanRoss.com.

On the plus side, I feel like blogging a bit more. I'm no longer trying to predate my posts to keep the archives filled. I've also added in dozens of new photos, resized and ready to go. That saves a lot of time and makes it more convenient to post. And also, in trying to keep Latenight up to date and growing, I can compartmentalize things easier. I can add the Korea and personal life stuff here. I can add the fun distractions and pop culture stuff there. Posting on one makes me feel guilty about neglecting the other too. So I feel compelled to not only double my output, but the second theme means that twice as often, I have something to write about somewhere.

Jongno last night.
I went out to Jongno with Karl last night. We had plans to catch a movie at Cinecore, which is now featuring Korean movies with English subtitles, all the time. The movie was sold out though, so we instead went for some bulgogi and a few beer, before heading back to Nowon. We had a good time and good conversation. It sure was cold though. As summer comes, it should be more convenient to plan outings like this that don't break the bank and that get me out of the house without the whole affair turning into horrible parody of a Pogues song. Even with the weather, the streets were packed.

Seolnal.
Just a week and a half until the Lunar New Year. We have a full week of classes this week, but next week we only go for two days before starting a five-day weekend. I am really looking forward to this. By then, all the affairs at the beginning of this post should be taken care of and I should be able to look at the New Year as a way to get settled into 2004. There's lots to do this year in preparation for going back to Canada in 2005. Yeji needs to get her Canadian visa. I need to start packing some things and shipping them off. (I'll start in a couple of months with winter items and move through the seasons as they come). I also have to lay more concrete plans for my business and prepare as much as I can so that it's as close to a turn-key start up as I can make it. I also want to start drafting plans for the house. I haven't decided yet if I can manage construction right away, or if I will opt for a mini-home or something small at first. Either way, I have to keep to a strict budget in 2004.

Saturday, January 03, 2004

SaveZone's Christmas tree at dusk, near home.

I've just finished scanning in a ton of new photos and amongst them were some Christmas shots. It's still within the twelve days of Christmas so here they are. I suspect that in a few years, Christmas will become a much bigger event in Korea. It seems to have picked up more and more steam each year since I arrived. I ask each of my students if they have Christmas trees, or if they give gifts. The "yes" responses seem to grow each time. Out around town, the amount of shopping traffic is also high for the season and I've noticed a lot more decorations around, as well as for sale.

Wreathes in Dongdaemoon.

New Year's went great but I am physically exhausted. Between the time I got up for school on Wednesday and mid afternoon today, I scored an incredibly unsatisfying 3 hours of sleep. Wednesday night was the usual personal web coding (adding the music stream to Latenight.ca) but I only managed to finish it in time to get a couple hours of sleep before rising again at 10am for a lunch appointment near Ehwa University. Yeji and I were going to her brother's house to meet her parents for New Year's Day. Her Mom had spent hours cooking up fresh seafood from their hometown of Busan. Mmmmm. One thing that Kyungsangnam-do had better than Seoul was seafood. There was lots of shellfish and Gongchee. Particularly, she brought up some conch, which is fastly becoming my favourite shellfish.

After lunch, Yeji, her father, her brother, his mysterious lady friend, and I went for a walk up to the temple near the university. I grabbed some pictures there, filling up the last of my 128 Meg camera card. Those shots have all been uploaded and resized so you'll see them soon as daily photos here.

I was exhausted by this point. I grabbed an hour of sleep before eating yet another luxurious meal and then cabbed it back early to home. I had some artwork to do that night. It kept me up all night with no further sleep and then the next day, Friday, the school was beginning it's winter schedule. I knew better than to try and rest for an hour after I finished the cartoon. Surely I would have gone out like a light. Instead, I watched part of the PBS series on Islam that I had downloaded, did some housework, and took down the recyclables (Friday morning is the pickup time). I made it to school, taught my classes, grabbed some supplies for the weekend and finally got to sleep at around 2pm until 8.

Now I'm debating whether I should sleep tonight. I have to be up in a few hours anyway, to go back to Immigration. My school had forgotten to get the sponsorship letters I needed. I have been assured that they will be ready if I drop in this morning by around 9am. It's annoying enough that I have to make a second trip to Mokdong but the extra errand of collecting the forms at the last minute shouldn't have been necessary.

Greetings from Freyatown.

So that's where I stand now. I can sleep... but I'd have to be up again in less than four hours. Added to that, Yeji's made plans to meet some friends in the afternoon. I suspect I am just going to have to push through and hopefully sleep on Sunday.

Quitting smoking isn't going to happen yet. Until I get a nice chunk of restful shuteye, I will need every stimulant I can ingest.

Thursday, January 01, 2004

Rounding a corner near work.

HAPPY NEW YEAR

It's already been 2004 here for almost 5 hours now. I rang in the New Year on the phone with the Visa people. Best to get all the bad luck out of the way right at the start, I guess. Things were pretty much subdued. I am up working on that streaming audio for Latenight.ca and have put together a full hour of Experimental and Industrial music which is being converted to the .ra stream as I type. If it works, I'm toying with the idea of creating cheesy "station identifications" to plug in the middle. It's lots of fun.

Today is a holiday. I'll be spending it having lunch with Yeji's brother and her folks. That means getting up a bit earlier than normal and I should probably have been asleep by now. The real vacation comes in a couple of weeks though, when the Lunar New Year is celebrated. Last year it fell across a weekend and only resulted in day off or something. This year, it starts on a Wednesday which gives a full five-day workweekend. You can't beat that.

So for everyone reading, my stream has finished its conversion and I am going to sign off by wishing you all the luck and fortune you can muster in the New Year, Peace, Goodwill. and Love amongst consenting participants.