Miryang Limbo
Posted by Andrew | Filed under Living in Korea
Nothin' much to say in italics this time around . . .
At the time of writing, I am sitting here in a small motel room in Changwon, having been dragged from an afternoon of repose on Monday, quietly watching the solitary wooden duck floating aimlessly around on the Yongji Park Lake in the centre of town (and with no real idea what it was supposed to be doing there). I had just been talking to erstwhile newbie workmate Charlie a mere twenty minutes before when my cell phone buzzed; it turned out to be the man from the recruiter, with news about my visa authorisation, which they had just received from the Kyoungnam Education Board, and we had to proceed post-haste to the Busan Immigration Office.
Now, for the last five (and another inconvenient bit) years, there would be an annual swing back to nearby Masan – a place blessed with many things, like an extensive harbour, a huge underground shopping mall, its very own university and no fewer than three, yes three, immigration offices – and a renewal of the existing visa. This time, however, with an impending shift up north to nearby Miryang, jurisdiction shifted likewise to Busan, in whose administrative sway I will now spend at least another year after the transition from a hagwon to a state elementary school. However, I'm not complaining.
So he picked me up outside the City Hall, which is situated on the big circle known here as the Changwon Rotary. He had more documents for the man at the Office; the cost would be sixty thousand won.
"But I only have fifty!" I said. What a surprise; they didn't bother to tell me about it beforehand, now where have I heard that before?
He lent me another twenty . . .
As it turned out, the visa application took a while, but once we got to the man's desk, he (Mr. Park) turned out to be very civil and helpful. The only real drag was that it would take EIGHT DAYS to process the application, I was flabbergasted; as the late Frankie Howerd (a famous English comic actor of non-straight gender preference) used to say: "My gast has never been so flabbered!"
Worse, if I wanted it delivered, that would add two days plus a delivery fee, and at that point I was still waiting for my previous employer to make good with the outstanding salary, so my financial pips were close to squeaking. So next week (March 31st) I will have to drag myself at an unearthly hour to the bus station here and travel once more to deepest Busan to pick the thing up. Then back to Changwon to pick up some gear and thereafter to my new repose in Miryang.
Who says I don't get enough exercise?
The immigration office was packed when we arrived. We had to battle through the afternoon pre-rush hour traffic, struggle to find anywhere for him to park his SUV, and we were then forty tickets behind the person currently being attended to at the desk; Westerners were few in number. However, we got there in the end; I filled in the visa application form (something usually performed by my previous Boss), and in the end it took some fifteen or twenty minutes for the essential processing to be completed. We then had to battle our way back to Changwon as the rush hour was in full swing . . .
The necessary prelude to all of this, unfortunately, was having to get everything out of my previous domicile (I had to vacate the apartment, which would then be inherited by my other English workmate, Phil), and this turned out to be awful. There seems to be agreement – at least among the English-speaking foreigners I know here – that removal staff are always a pain. My experience of these people – and I have now come across two of them in the last year – is that they are in too much of a hurry and are careless (read: don't trust them with your breakables!!!). Worse, an offer to store my books and gear in a friend's spare room evaporated and we had to prevail upon another in rather a hurry. But the result has been a mess; he couldn't get my desk out through the main door and actually removed the legs and then pulled it sideways along the floor, ruining one edge of the top surface; I went there to get some stuff today (because he also scruffed up my suit, which I had only picked up from the cleaner's the previous day), which I had to drop off for a dry-clean AGAIN; before that I discovered that he had also put a gouge into the top of the desk as well. Aaaaaarrrrgghhhh!!!!!!!
The story of how I came to have a job offer for Miryang is a curious one. I had applied for (and had a successful interview with) the EPIK programme back in December. Alas, however, I dithered about it and when I finally made up my mind, it turned out to be too late. I called the recruiter last Tuesday and asked what was happening, and she gave me the Bad News; EPIK had dropped me.
"Oh, great!" I said: "What do I do now?" (bearing in mind that this was three days before my hagwon job was due to end).
"Well, it might turn out to be a blessing in disguise," she said. They had already forwarded my visa portfolio to the Kyoungnam Education Board, and it seemed that they wanted to interview me, which they did the following afternoon; this was also successful, and resulted in the aforementioned trip to Busan. I am now less than a week away from the final move to Miryang, and everything looks to be proceeding well.
So I have another week of limbo before I get a trip to Miryang; another week of retiring to a small space of an evening, possibly after visiting the pub, doing things on my laptop here and waiting for a hectic Tuesday.
But I'm free right now, and the freedom is good.
Andrew. ^_^[/FONT]
Tags: elementary, hagwon, job, Korea, teaching
