The Love (and Lack) of Reading
Posted by Andrew | Filed under Cancer Diary, Commentary, Computing, General, Gripes, Living in Korea, Odds and Ends..., Uncategorized
With space dwindling on all my drives, I lost it this weekend and ordered a new 2TB hard drive for my main machine.
The fact that my new KT Internet keeps flipping out every morning is hardly pleasing me, either…
It seems to be one of those things these days… when I was younger and didn’t have the level of personal technology that I have now, you would routinely find me with my nose in a book or a magazine novels by Michael Moorcock, Fortean Times, that kind of thing. Alas, my needs these days, where moving between cities has been costing an arm, a leg and perhaps several other limbs over the years, things have contracted. I am not buying books routinely, not because I dislike books or even that I cannot afford them; no.
The trouble has been that I have encountered a number of impediments to relaxed and undisturbed reading. Many of the apartments have been unfurnished and without a bed to sleep on, never mind a comfortable reading chair; and when I got my last pair of glasses, the lenses (courtesy of Carl Zeiss, would you believe) came with a varifocal profile and two reading dimples placed in a position for an upright (rather than comfortably recumbent) head position. In addition, the kind of central room lighting here is terrible for extended sessions of reading, but I never seem to move between apartments without losing more appropriate reading lamps. My own personal preference is low-intensity ambient lighting, especially for reading, ideally from proper bulbs and not from LED shit, which is enriched in blue-wavelength emissions known to damage human eyesight [1]. So my actual domestic environment for reading has not been good for a long time. I really want to change that, and with a little reaasonable effort, that’s precisely what I aim to do over this coming winter.
In the meantime, however… ironically, the oldest working HD that I have is the original 80Gb drive I used to build my first machine in Korea back in 2004. The only reason I don’t use it any more is because all the new mobos I’ve seen don’t have IDE interfaces any more – only SATA.
If not for that, I’d still be using all my IDE drives because – so many years after I bought them – they are all still working. The biggest are 500Gb and they are now idle due to a preference on the part of the mobo manufacturers for SATA; go to Gmarket and, likewise, you will see that IDE drives are rarely new. This is the way the technology has gone since I arrived here.
Contrast that with the stupid 1Tb Western Digital drive I bought the other year. Never worked. Until I came to Korea, WD drives never failed. I still have a ten-year-old WD 160Gb portable that works, even though the USB situation has changed since then. And back at home in the UK, I always bought WD and never. had. any. issues. with them.
That last one, however, I refused to exchange at the time because hey, if it fails you have to send it to their office in Malaysia (!!!) at your own expense (by which they mean by international courier, of course). Which meant that to get a replacement would cost more than buying the original, and when confronted by that and having therefore wasted the money on a dead loss, I ordered a replacement from Seagate and WTF, no. trouble. ever.
So this time it will be another Seagate, at a fair price, twice the size of the previous one, which has filled up to about 85% in the space of three years. Well, I can’t imagine why, of course, it’s another great Mystery of Asia… but in particular, I really think it’s about time to drain my fifteen-plus years of e-mails from Yahoo, which seems to have gone so far downhill (and seems to have become some kind of disgusting NWO shill, if much of its so-called “news” is anything to go by). That, however, is currently just under 290Gb in size, and it will have to be dumped somewhere, and if I decide to dump my Facebook, too… well, you can see where this is leading.
As for the cancer front, unbelievably (for an English bod like me) the next blood test is scheduled for Guy Fawkes’ Night – November 5th! The day when a pre-Elizabethan crowd failed to blow up the old Houses of Parliament with King James actually in attendance. That’s on a Monday, too; time to book a day off in advance! But as always, I’ll let all two of my readers know what happens…
1: https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2016/10/23/near-infrared-led-lighting.aspx
Cancer Diary: Update 2018-08-03
Posted by Andrew | Filed under Cancer Diary, General, Living in Korea
Time for another one…
Three months (almost) since the last update, as we head towards the second quarterly blood sampling (which falls next Wednesday, how nice to have it during a vacation!), it’s probably a good time to take stock of the whole situation. What has been happening over the last three months?
Firstly, it has been difficult settling in to my new job, to the extent that I am already starting to think about what comes next. The reason for this was that the spring semester was so fragmented – we arrived here (co-worker Jonathan and I) pretty much in the dark about what was happening, and there were constant interruptions to lessons due to things like mass medical examinations and a week-long training exercise in Jeju which we only found out about relatively late in the proceedings; by the end of the semester, my scheduling was a mess. I have no desire for that to be repeated when the new semester begins in September.
Speaking of which, despite actually being in the middle of my vacation as I sit here typing this, I have already had to go in to the office three times in the last two weeks due to only belatedly being informed about writing up the new schedule for the fall semester. These (there are two: one for writing and one for speaking, as each class has two lessons each week) were completed last night, and it was hardly taxing (bearing in mind that later changes, i.e. during the semester itself, are expected, and after the way the last semester went, I can certainly believe it), but as we both (Jonathan and I) agreed, we could have put it all together in less than a day, at least two or three weeks ago; he (Jonathan) was actually on vacation in Thailand when he started getting text messages about it last week! As my spatial relationship with our office is less than optimal due to the public transport here, this is especially annoying (as I do not have my own car, of course) – the most convenient bus, which takes me actually into the base, comes only once every hour.
Another thing is that since the vacation is an extended period (due to having an extra five days of “business trip” allocated just before it began), I have been slipping back into my nocturnal habits, as I have never been a “morning person”, but with about nine more days to go I am getting up earlier to re-condition myself back into the necessary timeframe.
The big surprise (perhaps) is just how much sleep I have been needing during this vacation. There is little doubt in my mind that the stressful combination of having (and then paying for) the operation, being fired and having to find both a new job and new accommodation during the convalescence period all whilst already in the new job and planning and executing lessons has left me drained, but again, both Jonathan and I have been complaining about the fact that in too much of our non-teaching time, we have been essentially left to our own devices, and since we really only need maybe two lesson plans per week, this has led to a lot of thumb-twiddling (in his case, playing his favourite game on his Alienware laptop; in my case, reading e-books; in both cases, often falling asleep at our desks). This is a terrible waste of time, not to mention the fact that it is so unhealthy.
On the other hand, health-wise, things have felt fine: no pain, I am usually awake and alert with little tiredness after a mug of rocket-fuel fresh coffee in the morning. However, this lifestyle makes weight loss difficult, so I am increasingly trying to cut things out, especially wheat-based and other starchy products, as I may not have much opportunity normally to exercise them off. Another disadvantage of this new position is that the food given in the restaurant often has a high energy content, as it is intended for younger service staff who are expected to maintain a much higher exercise level; consequently, I have reduced the number of visits to the canteen.
Paradoxically, my main ‘issue’ seems to be the minimal medication prescribed for me by the Professor: the Lopmin capsules, to which my gut seems quite sensitive, to such an extent that, firstly, I had to reduce regular dosage to the minimum possible (one cap at a time), and secondly, with the obvious dehydration to be expected during a hot Korean summer, approaching weekends normally see me come off the medication temporarily so that I can empty my bowel properly. This has become a problem and I will have to mention it to the Professor next Wednesday; recall that the reason for the medication is to help the resected bowel stretch and slowly normalise its function (thus avoiding the need for frequent visits to the bathroom). Also, although in this situation additional dietary fibre should be advised, in practice this has often led to excessive loosening of the bowel (and too many visits to the bathroom), so I am also being careful not to consume too much fibrous food regularly.
Since the bowel has effectively become a trap for digested food due to this medication, there is also a ‘feedback’ sensation which recalls one of the symptoms experienced prior to the removal of the tumour: a feeling of nausea due to the backlog of partially-digested food, which has also been putting me off eating somewhat, which actually cannot be a bad thing – after all, if you are overweight, you can be pretty sure that in most cases, it’s due to (a) eating too much, (b) not enough exercise or (c) both. Something to bear in mind…
Another thing to bear in mind is that as well as reducing the amount of unnecessary biochemical energy (as sugar), there are also dangers inherent in consuming too much protein regularly. As it happens, another mail from Joe Mercola slurped its way into my Inbox overnight (1) and in it, he discusses the excess foods to avoid, the reasons why you should do so, and the benefits of intermittent fasting, something I have been trying to do but the medication seems to be getting in the way, as its action leads to accumulation of digested food in the remanent large intestine and difficulty in voiding it, making my abdomen alternately swell and contract. I have, however, been reducing the amount of yoghurt in my diet, which I was consuming in large quantities as soon after the operation as circumstances would allow (essentially for a convenient form of digestible protein), but the disadvantage is that most mass-manufactured yoghurts are firstly largely devoid of the fat content of a traditional yoghurt (due to the food industry’s reaction to Ancel Keys’ flawed research)(2) and secondly, to compensate for the alleged lack of flavour of fat-depleted yoghurts, due to the addition of digestible sugar, which nowadays, I presume, is largely fructose, which brings terrible effects of its own (3).
An additional point we might bear in mind is that a number of online health advisors (for example, Joel Marion (4) and Mike Geary (5)) have been pointing for years at the digestible carbohydrate content of dairy products as a possible reason why many people seem unable to lose weight and keep it lost. This is probably because of too much focus on glucose when there is in fact a variety of digestible saccharides coming into the body from a variety of foodstuffs; the focus on just glucose is therefore illogical and misdirected.
Anyway, I am feeling okay and looking forward to a brief trip back to Daegu next week for the blood sampling and a discussion of things with the Prof., and in the following two weeks I shall be back in the office. Hopefully, several issues will be resolved by then – a set of four new bookcases to be delivered from Gmarket (after an erroneous attempted purchase of cupboard doors without the attendant bookcases to which they were supposed to be attached – it can be difficult to extract information from Gmarket web pages sometimes!) and a few other bits and pieces. But I remain confident.
1: https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2014/09/03/too-much-protein.aspx
2: See, for example: https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2013/12/07/saturated-fat-cholesterol-heart-disease.aspx
3: Take a look at: https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2018/08/01/liver-damage-growing-epidemic.aspx
4: For example, http://transformationinsider.com
5: For example, http://www.truthaboutabs.com/good-carbs-bad-carbs.html (but see the whole site)
Cancer Diary: Update 2018/06/01
Posted by Andrew | Filed under Cancer Diary, General, Living in Korea
Some kind of progress…
Despite the stress of the last six months or so, things finally began to pull together this week as the last of the deposit on the new place was paid (liberating a lot of much-needed cash in the near future), although this really means having to live mainly on credit for the next month. Now, however, I can think seriously about replacing my lost bookcases and getting most of my possessions off the floor… meaning that there will be much more space available, sort of soon-ish.
From now on, things will normalise quite rapidly, and it seems to be working out likewise medically, also, as the reduction of Lopmin dosing loosens my insides and makes for more comfortable (if not entirely predictable, yet) sessions in the bathroom.
This is actually important: higher doses of Lopmin led to longer retention time for my stools, and as the function of the lower intestinal tract is (at least in part) the removal of water from whatever material is contained in the lumen before it is released, this has (up till now) meant having to void some very dry material, and it became clear quite quickly that some modulation of both dosing and the actual quantity of food consumed were necessary – as well as more serious consideration of how the matrices of the various food types being consumed were interacting with the other components of the system (imagine shitting large pieces of dry, fossilised wood). The question of water input (in terms of daily liquid consumption) seems something of a red herring at the moment, its effects possibly being disguised by those of the Lopmin; also, for a long time now, I have been consuming cashew nuts as a form of fibre but these need to be chewed well to avoid large (and sharp-edged) chunks passing through – good from the POV of digestive function, but possibly painful to pass (WTF, I’m alliterating again…).
In my own case, it seems to be a quite powerful drug, meaning that a relatively low dosage (one capsule = 2mg active component) has a relatively strong effect, which can be considered “adverse” in this context of preventing the retention and formation of (ultimately) very dry stools which can be painful to pass (bearing in mind that they have to pass through an area of the body which is still healing from surgery). The reduction of anal soreness as they soften is a welcome sign.
I contacted the Professor by text message to let him know what I was doing, as well as to inform him that we would have a quite extensive (about five weeks) summer break during which there would be plenty of time for me to work on his proposed English-language review of the FDD, which would also require additional input from him in terms of initial information about the structure, materials and original rationale of the FDD, its intended function, how it is operated, its interaction with a patient’s body and the intended timescale of usefulness (which was normally in the three weeks following the operation, during which it would be inserted into position, and then removal under the assumption that healing had progressed sufficiently). Some ready-made illustrations would be nice, too…
At work, as my students were in Jeju for most of this week, there have been no lessons, so I have been reading up on Korean language, linguistics, and also re-read Philip K. Dick’s “The Maze of Death”, thinking whilst so doing that it would be a good idea to read his “VALIS” at a later time, although to be honest, it has been difficult to stay awake during the afternoons… I do miss all of my Michael Moorcock novels back at home in England, but question whether it would be a good idea to have them sent here on the grounds that contracts for foreigners in South Korea are mainly for a year and you never really know what will be happening or where you will be a year after signing; this has never struck me as satisfactory, but on the other hand, since I left Mr. Lee’s hagwon in Changwon back in 2009, there has been little by way of stability in terms of location; my two years in Daegu seem to have been an exception rather than a rule.
Alas, I also had to say goodbye to my Speaking lesson co-worker of the past two months, Hoony, as he is returning to civilian life as a teacher, and his replacement will arrive on Friday, so that afternoon could be quite busy, but does at least have the advantage that all of the classes on Monday are the same (and hence so are also the lesson plans and materials), plus the first lesson is not until 11:30 a.m., so we can take things at a fairly relaxed pace.
Anyway, everything seems positive as we move into the summer.
Entr’acte II
Posted by Andrew | Filed under A Farewell to Authority, Breakfast in the Ruins, Cancer Diary, Commentary, General, Living in Korea, The Destruction of History
As things have been rather quiet with Yours Truly of late, a brief blog to bring everyone up to speed…
As a freezing cold winter slouches kicking and screaming into spring, and factually some of us are not getting any younger, we are also waiting – still – to sign our new contract and move on. How so? Well, I have (so to speak) “been here before” – caught up in the time-consuming activity of background checking for the new position, which is associated with the military. Again. And this time I think it is worth the prolonged agony, based upon what is a quite extensive experience of different employers.
See, in recent years, I’ve been through an alarming number of institutions, and the original motivation for chasing them for jobs was that I always thought they were professional entities, but the experience I have had with them (as a vulnerable E-2 visa holder) has been stressful; no wonder my hair has dropped out! And this whole thing has been very… disillusioning, as if the depth of diabolical despondency I had sunk into before I even left the UK was not enough. It has become very apparent to me that (in this particular instance) I was severely misguided in my assumption of “professionalism” in these companies, and so, now that the opportunity has arrived, I have had to reassess my opinions and ask what kind of employer is most suitable, and the answer is simple: the ones who will, for reasons relating primarily to their relationship with the Korean government, always honour their contracts.
Now, don’t get me wrong: the situation remains one in which I am surprised to discover that even at the tender age of 55 (in other words, I will be 56 this year), there are still institutions which will throw new opportunities at me: even the fact that I have been treated for (and technically am still “recovering from”) cancer has – it seems – not dented their enthusiasm. And this time, the essential “difference” is that my students will be exclusively high schoolers, which is something of a departure from my norm. However, the greatest surprise is the apparent eagerness, on the new employer’s part, to get me in there no matter what; so I temper my natural anxiety at being perilously close to the end of a visa with an element of patience and expectation – in anticipation of a positive and, one would hope, a mutually beneficial relationship to come. And I hope it lasts for a suitably substantial length of time. I’m talking years, dude!
It’s not clear yet how this will pan out because of the fiendish length of time I am having to hang on, right now, waiting for the (already apparently positive) result of the new employer’s two-stage security clearance checks before actually putting pen to contract, as my current visa is slowly edging towards expiry; also, surprisingly, the lack of actual details of the post itself, as the “interview” turned out to be something of a damp squib (apparently I was expected to do some kind of demo, but the recruiter didn’t pass that on to me, among other things, quel surprise). But, previously, I have worked for the Royal Air Force back in the UK and have done instructing for another military employer here in Korea, the KDLI in Icheon, Gyeonggi-do, so it’s not like there will be a huge surprise, in terms of practice and procedure (and security implications, of course). Right now, it’s just a case of being patient and getting in there ASAP.
But an interesting theme seems to be emerging while I am waiting… it’s been a long, long time since I had the dubious pleasure of a TV in my apartment, and truth to tell, when you consider that a lot of the time, I only want to watch older stuff (with exceptions such as trying out the latest Star Trek and X Files), and the amount available for free, on-line and on demand, from the likes of YouTube, DailyMotion and – right now – 123MoviesHub.ag [3], means that a TV is basically unnecessary; everything is digital and available for free through my Internet cable. This doesn’t mean that TV is actually redundant (UFC, anyone???), but the dominance that it had over my mind when I was younger is shattered forever. I made a choice, and the result is that my mind is much freer. I need hardly point out that as this is Korea, much of what I might have to subscribe to here would also be rather irrelevant in cultural and linguistic terms.
All of which means that I have become progressively more open to information and opinions which formerly I would have considered ridiculous, unjustified and downright way out, which subsequent events have demonstrated to my satisfaction are possibly more deserving of consideration and merit than social (and media) conditioning would previously allow me to countenance. And yet, at the same time, I do think that since I was a teenager, I have been on a path away from notional orthodoxy, be it in terms of historical truth or scientific honesty, for example, in search of a kind of verisimilitude which cannot be tolerated by a control system the machinations of which depend upon the demonstrable covert destruction of important historical materials, the perversion of historical events and the erection of whole paradigms which work only as a result of indoctrination and saturated media propaganda (Bill Nye, anyone? Neil DeGrasse Tyson??? Who will the next buffoon be?) which seems to be resulting, especially in the USA, in a new caste of younger people who are emotionally unstable when their knowledge or opinions are questioned. This latter is the very opposite of learning and wisdom, and it is very revealing that, being unable to mount a rational and complicated argument against even just a person with a different opinion, the response tends to be a kind of emotional violence akin to that of a two-year-old. A recent example from Sputnik:
Professor Says Men and Women are Different
At a personal level, I am repulsed by this kind of thing, and it has been stimulating me to look more towards traditional philosophers; it does seem to me that inculcated infantilism is not a suitable response to the dangers which are arising in modern societies – and if you look at places like the Ukraine right now, it’s not “new” dangers that are arising: instead, it’s the return of the “old” dangers, rooted in the previous centuries but especially the events and attitudes of the mid-twentieth century. There is a word for this, and that word is recidivism – meaning a return to a former, inferior and usually criminal or otherwise socially unacceptable mode of behaviour [1]. Experience shows us that it is usually not a good idea to try to return to the environment of our past, primarily because we have changed – the increase in our knowledge and experience, not to mention the resulting changes in our personal sensibilities which also change the limits of what we will now tolerate, is what really makes a return to a past situation impossible. It is for this reason that we will often hear that the transition from an old paradigm to a new one is referred to as “being like dying”, as we shed the old attachments, possibly with great psychological difficulty, in order to accommodate the new – which seems somehow reminiscent of the comment by Max Planck: “A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.” [4] – except here, of course, it is the concept which dies rather than the adherent.
As an example of the type of new input that I have been accepting, take a look at “Redesigning Reality”, a relatively new vodcast put out regularly by Dylan Charles of “Waking Times” [2] fame, assisted by his friend, Jeff Anthony, whose response to his own bodily injuries has been very philosophical and mature and has impressed me greatly:
http://redesigningreality.com
and you can see them regularly on YouTube:
plus, perhaps, honourable mentions for the likes of Vin Armani and his show… but alas, I do not tune in to Vin as often as I should.
However, we have to face all of these (and other) potential inputs with a severe caveat: none of them is one hundred per cent. reliable.
One would think that this was the prime result of enlightened exposure to conventional media – the realisation that there is a limit to how much credence we can extend to them. So, for example, recently Vin had David Icke as a guest on his show:
David represents an interesting example of information and opinion input, largely because of his long-time claim regarding the manipulation of humanity by unseen reptilian beings, for which he has frequently been lambasted by the mainstream media. But here’s the interesting point: take this away (or ignore it temporarily) and focus on the rest of his message, and what do you discover? It all connects well, and makes a disconcerting amount of sense, as well, perhaps, as being a lot more humane than the conventional narratives. Notice here how well it seems to interdigitate with Vin’s personal take on the situation. Subtract the one part of David’s narrative which is difficult to prove, and the result is a coherent picture; there is nothing which David expresses which should attract disrespect from the listener.
This is teaching us something: no source of information is absolutely reliable and foolproof, so approaching verisimilitude means having the bullshit detector on and weaving our way through a constant morass of misinformation and disinformation to uncover reality (note that I do not say “the truth” here). I would not accuse David of disseminating such materials – rather, the interesting point is that when his most contentious (and difficult-to-prove) topic is placed to one side, the rest makes striking sense. We should do this until it can either be definitively proven or disproven.
The implication here is that there are truthful elements within all narratives, but according to the reliability, affiliations and provenance of the originators of those narratives, each needs to be assessed on his/her/its own merits and compared with other narratives to arrive at a more realistic assessment of what we are seeing and hearing. To what extent are any of these truthful? How do they corroborate or deny each others’ veracity? Sometimes we need to return to these fundamental points, especially when we realise the extent to which such institutions as schools and universities are really just indoctrination houses for a particular paradigm. This point should be foremost in our minds at all times; we cannot judge the truthfulness or falsehood of what confronts us otherwise. When we hear the sayings of others, when we watch a documentary or read a book or a newspaper article (online or offline), what we are confronted with is either an opinion (which may or may not be reliable or truthful, depending upon previous inputs of information to the speaker) or a concoction of facts and non-facts intended to bolster support for a particular agenda – which I once saw in an old cartoon expressed as (and here I paraphrase): “a subtle blend of truth, half-truth and anything but the truth.”
To put it another way: On the spectrum from zero to one hundred per cent. “truthfulness”, where would you routinely place what you hear in the news? This is always a simple and convenient way of measuring things, and I often use this kind of scale for other purposes with my students:
On this scale, I would put David Icke at about 85%.
The final element here relates to my recent brush with death in the form of colorectal cancer, something I had not expected, but having said that, something for which I was mightily glad to find an accommodating surgeon; and the fact that post-operative recovery seems to have been so rapid (due to the experimental device used) cannot allow me to ignore the implications for the future. But one side-effect I have discovered, at the psychological level, is a loss of patience. By this I mean to suggest that the sudden unexpected encounter with mortality, having made me realise that my days are ultimately numbered, has stripped away my usual forbearance with certain social behaviours, and the constant attempt by certain sources to indoctrinate me into the obviously false paradigm is one of these; another is the visible recidivism in both myself and others, which will result in stagnation if allowed to proceed unchecked; essentially, I have lost my tolerance for distractions, and feel as if I want to apply Occam’s Razor to everything, the better to avoid constantly wasting precious time.
So from my current perspective, the arrival of my new employer has to be seen in terms of how it will enable me to develop and progress, as it is not like previous positions – what promise does it hold in its own right, and what might it eventually lead to, bearing in mind that I have never subscribed to (what seems to me to be) a rather antiquated view of “retirement” – excuse me? If I arrive at an age at which employers no longer wish to take me on, does my life suddenly end? Does my brain suddenly stop functioning? Of course not – this is really nineteenth-century thinking, a leftover from a time when employees of such institutions as the British railways could have the luxury of working for a single, reliable employer for their whole lives and then stop working. But my mind is too active for that. So we now arrive at a time of transition.
Last night (a Saturday night spent at home – again – because of the post-operative strictures imposed by the surgeon) I was looking at the philosophy of Epicurus, noting how it seems to fit quite well with my own outlook on pleasure and pain and (believe it or not) the avoidance of unnecessary acquisition of material satisfactions, and today, whilst thinking about this, noting afresh (and not without some surprise) how the basics of life could have changed so little since the man himself was alive. It is in this frame of mind that I will be facing the future – avoiding unnecessary discomfort (I would not use the word “suffering”, as this is illogical) by choosing carefully the things I wish to have in my life, and bearing in mind that what the likes of advertisers and other contemptible mind-controllers want me to waste my time on are not necessary for the essential core of my lifestyle. I am not someone’s convenient target market, I am a rational human being and will resist the tide of greed and idiocy in search of a reliable picture of reality.
So I come closer to the time of signing and remain here for a short while longer, throwing out trash and planning the transition, but it’s probably a good idea to remember that the avoidance of recidivism usually involves throwing out some of your own junk. That, I think, is a good point to end here: letting go of my junk and opening my mind to new vistas of knowledge and thought. Epicurus, at least, got that part right.
References:
[1] See also the definition given at http://www.dictionary.com/browse/recidivism?s=t.
[2] See: http://www.wakingtimes.com
[3] See, for example: https://123movieshub.ag/series/star-trek-discovery/
[4] See: https://www.brainyquote.com/search_results?q=max+planck
Entr’acte
Posted by Andrew | Filed under Cancer Diary, General, Gripes, Living in Korea
Before getting back to my Cancer Diary – and so much has happened since I last wrote any of it – let me relate that today was the first day of returning to the hospital to talk with the Professor since being discharged last Thursday, and as usual there were surprises.
See, this device he plugged into me has no proper “instruction manual” to go with it. I have really only just understood the proper function of the thing. So I have been avoiding the use of the lumen valve when in truth I should have been using it – during shopping or other trips out of my place, for example. The lumen valve, which is actuated by injecting water into the device with a syringe, prevents the outward flow of gut contents. I think you can probably figure out the rest…
The second thing is that now the resectioning operation appears to have been successful, the FDD will be removed next Wednesday. But I had received the impression (wrongly, it turns out) that the FDD was to be a permanent fixture, but no! – it now appears to only be put in place to serve as a hygienic conduit while the rectum wall was healing. Once this process is competed (three weeks after the operation), it can be removed. The remaining gut will eventually adjust to working normally as it did before the neoplasm was removed. Or so I have been reassured.
So, while I was discussing my (generally favourable) health with the Professor, he said that I was already able to resume work.
“Ah,” I said: “but the company has given me until the end of February to recuperate.” I will return to the use of this time period in a moment.
Afterwards, a time was arranged for the removal of the FDD and a barium enema x-ray shoot, which will almost certainly be the actual end of the cancer episode.
But how about the job? The company had been signalling previously that they would be “open” to re-signing me, but how “open” were they, really?
I left the hospital and walked back to our office, just down the road, to tell my manager what the Prof. had said. During our discussion, she asked me whether I had heard anything from the company in the interim, and of course, the answer was “no”; since our conflab in Seomyeon back at the end of July, I had heard nary a peep out of them.
The gist was that there was a possibility that (based largely upon negative reviews from the students, never mind the fact that too many of them needed some severe improvements in their English in order to be fully functional) they might not want to re-sign me after all. Great. Should I start looking for a new job already? If they were not going to re-sign me, then I would have to do this; the lucky happenstance of having been out of work for literally only two days before signing for the current job was the exception, rather than the rule, as historically finding something new would take months.
Additionally, when I was waiting to go to the hospital in December, I spent the weekends working on lesson plans and materials for a proposed new course due to commence after re-signing; but if they don’t re-sign me, there is no point in proceeding with this. They are not paying me right now because I am not working – and another foreigner from a different branch is covering for me while I “recuperate” – and I will only continue with that work out of a sense of goodwill _if_ they are going to re-sign, otherwise I have more important things to do with my time.
Personally, I have always felt prickly whenever this question of student feedback being in the negative zone rears its ugly head. In my experience, “proper training” is something that Korean employers tend to avoid. Lack of communication is part of the problem, but a desire to avoid wasting money, I suspect, is in there somewhere too, however irrational that may sound. After all, if you don’t communicate with workers as a matter of course and don’t provide them with the feedback and training they need for a specific job, what possible right do you have to complain, really? I myself have plenty of things that make me want to complain, but my response is tempered nowadays by the idea that simply complaining about something is not enough – one acquires greater legitimacy when complaining if one has a viable alternative suggestion, at least.
My own complaint is that a job of this kind requires far more training and orientation for someone like myself, with a lower-level academic background than some of my peers here. Otherwise, I am constantly in danger of appearing inauthentic to the students, primarily due to lack of relevant experience. So I made this point today – that I would be perfectly happy to re-sign but would appreciate further training in order to be more effective in the position. You’d think it was a no-brainer – after all, it is not every person who can simply walk into a job like mine and be perfect from the get-go. But as I say, in my experience this is a big issue with Korean employers.
The real stumbling-block for so many Korean language-related companies seems to be the lack of product diversity – what has emerged over the last few years, for me, based on my own observations, is that too many of the English-based businesses here are one-trick ponies – it is often a struggle to get the management to accept that they need to offer a greater variety of products to attract more customers. And they are often scared of negative ratings from students who really do not have a sufficient level of English themselves to (as in our case) progress to teaching their own students. Business owners are often inflexible.
So suddenly, in the immediate aftermath of a cancer operation, I am yet again faced with the possibility of having to mount a job search. I have every expectation that the company will prevaricate until me having already found a job in the meantime is upon them, by which time, of course, it will be too late… but this is Korea, so what’s new?
The War that No-one Wanted (Continued)
Posted by Andrew | Filed under A Farewell to Authority, Breakfast in the Ruins, Commentary, General, Living in Korea, The Destruction of History, Uncategorized
And what should be doing the rounds lately, but:
The War that No-one Wanted
Posted by Andrew | Filed under A Farewell to Authority, Breakfast in the Ruins, Commentary, General, Living in Korea, The Destruction of History
It’s probably because I don’t have a TV any more (and I would probably only watch UFC etc. all the time if I did), but if the Norks lobbing the occasional dud missile into the sea constitutes “provocation”, might I respectfully suggest that the people saying this are in need of “medication”?
Because you’d have to be living in a media-shill-controlled little bubble to think that the Norks are going anywhere fast. The parties with an interest in all of this are clear to see and the Americans in particular should have been sitting around a table with the Norks, Chinese and Russians, at least, to find a solution.
War on the peninsula is not inevitable but is being stoked by those who profit from it, for whom any person who is not in their diabolical little circle (ordinary people in Korea, North and South, plus the remainder of humanity) is expendable trash, that’s exactly how they see us.
And if anyone starts to raise the dubious spectre of “Democracy versus Totalitarianism” or similar waffle to justify a conflict, let’s remember that there used to be regular meetings between the concerned parties (“democratic” and otherwise), and an agreement was reached to help the Norks with their power requirements, which the Americans were proposing, but, ah… the disadvantage of “Democracy”, in this case, is that when the citizenry are swayed to change their administration, policy also changes, and that is why we are talking about this today, otherwise the “problems” with NK would have been solved around fifteen years ago and everything would have been much more tranquil.
But hey, there’s no profit in peace… is there?
Pentagon should move US military families from S. Korea ahead of possible war – Sen. Graham
The Trials and Tribulations of a New Job
Posted by Andrew | Filed under Commentary, General, Living in Korea, Odds and Ends...
It frightens me sometimes to think how long I have been here… tonight I am back in the Pinot Wine Bar in Banpo, Seoul, not far from the Express Bus Terminal, and predictably, just like when I first started coming here all those years ago (when I was working in Korean public elementary schools, God help me!) I couldn’t remember the way (wrong exit from the Bus Terminal again) and ended up getting more early evening exercise than expected…
Right now, the early spring air in Seoul is something of a miasma, as the first clouds of the annual ‘Hwang sa’ (the ‘Floating Yellow Dust’ from the Gobi mentioned previously at times in this blog) waft their noisome way across the brief stretch of ocean separating the Korean peninsula from mainland China and combine with the indigenous smog of an early Seoul evening, and already, close to the end of March, the KTX train coming north from Daegu was filled with the sound of irritated lungs coughing; at both ends and all points in between, where the line of sight allows it, the distant hills are barely distinguishable from the grey, overcast sky. Happily, perhaps, the weather app on my phone is promising rain tomorrow, but towns in the south seem to be having surprisingly high levels of airborne dust. Thus it comes to pass that, as is the case every spring, the true harbinger of the coming summer is not the emerging green buds and leaves on the trees, but a grey sky and a constant cough in the throats of all of those unwise enough to venture out without a dust mask of some description, although some of us also take some dubious medication for it, too.
Alas, what brings me here on what should now be my odd weekend (the new job involves working from Wednesday to Sunday evenings each week; my ‘weekend’ is now Monday and Tuesday) was yet another visa screw-up – immediately after receiving copies of the countersigned contract and the other papers necessary to transfer sponsorship from the old employer to the new, I took the Seoul subway to the correct Immigration Office, and what did I discover? They had gone completely over to a reservation system the previous April, and no longer used the drop-in-take-a-ticket-and-wait-yer-turn method which, ironically perhaps, seems to work so well elsewhere. One might even point out that even when the old Busan office, which used to occupy a couple of floors of the Customs Building down near the harbour, was transplanted into a swanky, squeaky-clean new place a couple of blocks down the road, it was not necessary to enforce the new system because, as anyone who went there could see, customers occupied surprisingly few of the seats whilst waiting… which was quite a contrast with the previous situation, where you could hit the place on a weekday afternoon and find it full of Russian and Chinese sailors in nervous groups in the corners, Korean grannies looking after Filipino-Korean grandchildren as they ran around screaming and shouting, and various odd European and American English speakers regarding the melée with a mixture of confusion and amusement on their faces as they were waiting their turn.
Anyway… so… I then began a furious KakaoTalk chat session from my cell phone with the recruiter who was involved this time and who – alas – did not seem to understand that it was no longer possible to take a ticket and wait – you had to go online and make a reservation for some time in the near(ish) future, and – double alas! – it seems that the Seoul office already had no less than an eighteen-day backlog of applicants. It rapidly became apparent, also, that I was far from the only foreigner with this problem, as the enquiry desk off to the right-hand side of the office was swamped and just to add unwanted fuel to the already blazing fire, after talking with the female member of staff there (via my own cell phone) the recruiter demanded that I get the name of the office staff member so that she could lodge an official complaint because “she is so rude!”. I had to talk her down from her state of High Dudgeon (is there such a thing as Low Dudgeon???), and she went online and reserved a time slot for me, which (as I sit here writing) is tomorrow afternoon. And then back home and lessons on Wednesday, possibly after being up for hours with little sleep prepping up.
It’s one of the stranger aspects of being in a country for a long time, and travelling between towns to wherever the next job takes you, that you realise one day, with something approaching (let’s call it) amusement, that you could probably write a whole raft of blog entries about your experience with the Immigration Offices alone; it could be a whole series. Likewise, the strange emergence of the requirement for an annual medical check, something not deemed a necessity when you arrived here with an entry visa stamped in your passport, a suitcase and a couple of large wheelie bags full of books and stuff, and a slow trail of boxes sent by surface mail from Taiwan for cheapness, but which was suddenly applied by the customs people immediately after Lee Myung-bak was elected President at the the of 2007. Somewhere, when it was out of your sight, that nice square wheelie bag that you purchased new in Taipei was ripped apart at the seams, presumably by a Customs minion, and had to be unceremoniously discarded once ensconced in one’s new home. And not a word about compensation…
The documentary requirements quickly accumulated: first, they wanted you to take a health check each year; simultaneously, they started demanding criminal record printouts, in my case from the Metropolitan Police Database, which alone took at least two months. But pretty soon, this was considered insufficient – next, they wanted the copy of your original Degree deposited with the offices to be apostilled (and since it was a copy rather than the original, this meant that it first had to be notarised. In England. And then apostilled!), and finally, they wanted the (original) criminal record to be apostilled, too!
This made the provision of documents an expensive venture in insanity, both in terms of total price and in the amount of time required (as procuring a fresh criminal record printout could take upward of three months). For myself, I think the final straw came when I signed the contract for the year at the KDLI outside of Icheon in Gyyeonggi-do. It seems that they had decided that they should also have their own copies of the same documents provided by the applicants, and this could not have happened at a worse time for me personally, as the cost of relocation had crippled me financially and resulted in my new five-million-won credit card being commuted to (a more sensible) two million limit; it took an agonising FIVE MONTHS to get the CRC (from the Met in London) apostilled and with a notarised, apostilled Degree copy into the hands of Captain Lee, who was the foreigner liaison officer (the Korean Army were in charge of the place, or so it seemed; I never did quite figure that part out).
Even worse, two years after I graduated from what was originally CCAT in Cambridge (now the Anglia Ruskin University), the government of the time (Conservative) decided that it was appropriate for all of the former colleges and polytechnics, who used to issue Degrees on behalf of the CNAA (Council for the National Accreditation of Awards) or other existing universities should now become self-accrediting in their own right. This had the unfortunate consequence of consigning past CNAA records into the care of the Open University somewhere in north London, from whence (the last time I asked) it was not possible to obtain copies or reproductions in the event of loss or destruction. So I became very panicky at the prospect of having to send my one copy of my Degree back to England for whatever reason… even worse, institutions like EPIK (English Program In Korea) also demanded at least two sealed transcripts from said university, which the changes since my graduation have likewise rendered impossible, thus limiting opportunities for employment here, although I would have to say that I would not, nowadays and at my age, consider a new EPIK position to be appropriate or desirable. Those days are over!
The final nail in the coffin of EPIK applications, however, is that applicants from the UK and Australia now also have to submit copies of their birth certificates (why is that, I wonder???), something rather difficult because (a) I would have to fly back to find the silly thing because it is doubtful that my parents would be able to locate it, and (b) Korean employers tend to be rather mean with allowances for time off and it would, in any case, probably cost the equivalent of two months’ salary payments just for the air tickets! It might be possible to do this between jobs but it might also mean having to produce fresh apostilled documents, adding more cost in terms of money and time, the regulation here being that an applicant is not required to submit new documents provided that they are out of Korea for a period of less than three months.
Anyway, getting back to the main story… the odd factor in the equation in fact takes me back to a brief few minutes at the Suwon Immigration Office at the start of my time with the KDLI in 2013, which I had to travel to by public transport (seems like that’s something of a theme here, too) and at my own expense after a morning session of four lessons. I had no idea whether things would be okay, but I was assured by Mr. Han from Busan, the recruiter who brought me here from Taiwan all those years ago, that all I needed to transfer my visa was a set of four documents: passport, ARC, Letter of Release and a copy of the signed contract, and of course, I was well informed by his experience. And as it transpired, the process took no more than about fifteen minutes, tops, and the staff there turned out to be a pleasant group of girls who liked a laugh, although they did express surprise at the fact that I had resigned suddenly from the last position, which was (sadly) the seventeen-month extended contract offered to me by the same public elementary school who had employed me before I went to Busan to work for YBM… but I have mentioned this before…
“Ohhh, it was terrible!” I told them. Well, I think they believed me…
But we should consider from this anecdote that there was no actual problem with the Suwon Immigration Office themselves; the necessary documents had been deposited when I moved from Yangsan to Seomyeon, Busan in 2011 (and in fact, as I sit here writing this, these documents are still current, because circumstances have, yet again, prevented me from leaving the country since I did a visa run to Fukuoka in 2010), and the only documentary change they required was essentially notification of the new employer and the contract to prove it. No, it was the KDLI insisting that they were entitled to their own set of apostilled docs that caused so much grief; paying for them involved giving money to a friend so that I could use their credit cards. And the whole thing had to be done one afternoon in a PC room in Changwon – we had to find one where we could print the receipt web pages as proof of purchase. I kid you not!
So we should perhaps also include a nod of gratitude to the staff at the Immigration Offices, who often have to work with fractious and volatile foreigners with whom communication is difficult. I have never forgotten that it was one of their number, Mr. Kang, who at that time was working at the airport on Jeju Island, who came to my rescue when I landed there after flying out from Taiwan with only a wedge of New Taiwan Dollars in my wallet and none of the local currency, having received my final salary payment from Carol Hui, the secretary of my dubious employer and then left in something of a hurry; I actually had to overstay my visa AGAIN because I was waiting for someone to deliver the ticket before I could pay the overstay fine at the customs office and fly out. Despite the fact that it was late at night and the currency bod had already closed shop for the evening, Mr. Kang persuaded him to Do The Dirty Deed for me. Likewise, much more recently, my stint down in Geoje was cut short by the unavailablity of a new position from my then-employer, who actually sent my Letter of Release to the Geoje Immigration Office the same day as the semester ended, but somehow didn’t think to tell me about it immediately (and why was that, I wonder???); I was then going backwards and forwards between the Geoje and Masan offices for days while they worked out which one was responsible for handling me, and which was finally resolved when Masan allowed me an extra month thereafter to find a new job. They might have offered me even more time, but sometimes, perhaps, a beggar can’t be a chooser. Or cheeky, come to that…
After my visa experiences in Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong and South Korea, I’m sure that my readers could share many similar ones of their own. Suffice it to say that the root of these procedures is the security of their countries, and while we may complain at the levels of inconvenience that they impose upon us, they are not usually trying to treat us unfairly; one could hardly blame them if they had a stereotype of an eternally-complaining (and usually, I don’t know, kind of pale-skinned?) foreigner who somehow seems to have an unreasonable belief that they have an automatic right of abode just because they happened to be there. It might be a good idea to step back for a moment and ponder the situation which finally evolved vis-a-vis the required documents here, because in the end, it seems to have reached an equitable balance between establishing the probity of the applicant and not imposing unnecessarily regular demands for new apostilled papers. Once the documents have been submitted to the local Immigration Office, they are scanned and retained in their database; thereafter, they remain current until such a time as the visa holder leaves the country for three months or more – meaning that it is now possible to leave the country for an extended period and still retain the visa, resuming legal activities here upon your return. It is also possible to stay in the country for up to six months between jobs by transferring to a D-10 (Jobseeker) visa and then (in my own case) transferring back to an E-2 once a new contract is signed. This is not a cheap process, however.
I suppose we could say that what often seems to happen in the case of immigration arrangements is that everything seems almost perfect, when all of a sudden, we find that there’s an annoying fly in the ointment, except that where immigration is concerned, the fly tends to involve an awful lot of financial and temporal expense. In addition, because a negative result vis-a-vis a visa (my God, I’m alliterating again!) could be catastrophic, the foreigner feels nervous and therefore, despite probably the best efforts and intentions of the Immigration Office staff, the whole thing collapses – like when (I was told) a loud American at an Immigration Office one day lost it and started abusing (verbally) the staff who were attending him, so they cancelled his visa right there and then, and he was out. As I found out first with my experience at Suwon and then more recently in Daegu, a little patience and humour goes a long way.
In the event, it took a huge amount of said ‘patience’ to get the thing sorted. Why? Because when I went up to the Immigration desk at the allotted time, the first thing the (lady) officer said was to ask where the Proof of Residence was; as it turned out, the new company had not included this in the original bundle that they gave me. Secondly, I was told at the time that it should be in my Inbox because it was sent by e-mail, but when I returned home that night, before sitting down to do at least some minimal prep before hitting the sack, I checked both of the e-mail accounts to which documents had been sent by the company, and could find said attachment in neither of them. Finally, it just so happened that the company manager was in the US at the time (!!!), and it took some four hours to get a copy of the housing contract faxed directly to the Immigration Office to complete the process. Again: I kid you not.
What we can observe here is the contrast between a straightforward transfer of visa sponsorship (because that’s what it was, and that’s how it should have been) and one compounded by inattentiveness on the part of one (or both) parties… there was at least one other complicating factor here, but I will not labour the point. I think it’s fair to say that in this particular case, difficulties arose because of the habit amongst the natives to not discuss with (or to make aware) their co-workers about what they are doing in the event that a crisis emerges and the co-worker has to (however temporarily) carry the can for them (a point which, oddly enough, figures large in the “Lesson Planning” component at my new employer…). I’ve seen it so many times, but this time it was almost catastrophic… you can’t mess about with Immigration, no matter how sympathetic they themselves may be.
As for myself… sometimes it feels as if I have a huge pot of ointment, the top is always open and it’s always so clogged with flies that it looks like a good old Spotted Dick pudding (but where’s the fucking CUSTARD???); but even though their involvement in my life is so fundamental and potentially life-changing, it would be wrong to single the Immigration Offices and the Ministry of Justice out because they are not the only insects trapped in my personal pot of cream. The ‘trouble’ is that they require a stack of documents for compliance, and so many things can go wrong along the way; this is my main point here.
As an illustration of other complicating factors in my life here, recently, a letter arrived which (I was told) was an invitation to partake in cancer screening, as I am now in my (ahem) fifties , and It’s The Done Thing (meaning, there is probably a legal requirement involved); Joseph, my manager in the previous position, hinted that it might be free (well, whoopee…). And I have been lamenting for a long time now that the requirement to plan lessons and find or design materials (and seek out materials online) involves a lot of sitting down; the lifestyle is simply not healthy, so I have been adjusting my diet accordingly, but this sedentary occupation also means that losing weight is not easy.
And the involvement of the Seoul Immigration Office in the Big Picture does seem to complicate things further, but in the end, like myself, the staff there are merely small units within the big machine, and patience and politeness are the lubricants for all of the dubious cogwheels; and as I adumbrated long ago, whether we like (or understand) it or not, when we arrive upon the shores of Korea we are the real ambassadors of our peoples; if our complaint with regard to peoples such as the Koreans is that we are seen through eyes that cannot see us afresh, maybe we should remember that actions speak louder than words, and maybe the actions of those belonging to our own nations here, in the past, may not have been as good or as beneficial as we might like, and the only way to counter the negatives is to be positive ourselves.
More Experiences…
Posted by Andrew | Filed under Living in Korea
After a prolonged period of relative blogging silence, I think everyone may have noticed that I am inexplicably still here and might wonder what the exact story was… well, for those who don’t know, here we go (unfortunately, not quite as briefly as intended)…
Let me preface this by saying that since I wrote that last note, I have abandoned every shred of credulousness that I used to direct toward people who felt they were entitled to comment upon the foreigner’s situation in a place like Korea. It does seem to me that I was allowing commentators’ false pessimism (and the pessimism of some people around me, no names mentioned) to colour my perception of the situation so that I couldn’t really see what was happening. I’ll come back to this briefly before I finish but first, let’s look at what happened…
Firstly, after about seven or eight months working for the KDLI in Icheon, it was becoming clear that it was a bad fit stylistically, a situation worsened by the employer’s desire for me to be doing the job in a certain way, but unable to communicate their desires effectively. I well recall that during my two-month (!) winter break, my slumbers were broken at 7:30am one Monday morning by my handler there (a Navy Lieutenant) asking me if I wanted to re-sign for another year, and quite aside from not liking my slumbers broken at 7:30am on a Monday morning, I also didn’t like the idea of an extended unpaid vacation each year and a host of other issues which I felt were affecting my health in a negative fashion (like a stodgy diet in the canteen geared towards younger people getting much more exercise and providing the energy they needed for it, long immobile commutes in the shuttle buses and hours each week spent sitting at my desk doing prep work). So I kissed goodbye to a KRW2.8million/month job and returned to my old job teaching kids in Changwon.
And this went on quite well for about six months, until the Friday evening before the 2014 Chuseok weekend… the Boss called me in to his office and said: “Andy, I have a big problem.”
“What is it?” I asked: “Am I doing something wrong?”
“No,” he said: “It’s not your problem, it’s my problem…”
As it turned out, the decline in student numbers his business was experiencing was hitting his bottom line sufficiently for him to be unable to pay me after the end of October: “Please find another job as soon as possible,” he said.
So yet again I was facing another winter where I had to find something new. But after having to deal with a terrible bunch of young students when I had already decided that it was not for me (and the return to Changwon was really just convenient at the time), I decided that enough was enough and would not accept offers to teach children any more, and placed advertisements around my usual wide swath of Internet job sites accordingly. And I had a big surprise (or three) to come …
One day I had a phone call out of the blue from someone in Daegu about a new adult teaching position, which was all the more surprising because when I heard him speaking on my phone the first time, I mistook him for a recruiter with whom I had been in contact for quite some time, so this experience was somewhat disorientating, giving me the misleading impression that a shift back north of Kyungnam was beckoning. We arranged to meet at the ‘Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf’ at City7 and Saturday morning that week, we got together to discuss it. His English nickname was Charles, and it turned out (as I discovered some time later) that he was a high school friend of the hagwon owner in Daegu, whose English ability was very limited. As our conversation progressed, I had the strange feeling that this wasn’t actually an ‘interview’ at all, and pressed him on the point: “No,” he said, and proceeded to tell me what the new employer wanted me to do.
This has been a recurring theme over the last few years: if they want you, you have the job. It’s that simple. The school in Yangsan took me on twice, my old employer in Changwon knew me well, and I didn’t even have a proper ‘interview’ for my current job – rather, a lecture about what I was going to be doing.
So I arranged to shift all my gear to Daegu at some expense (and I won’t go into details here) and started making materials for the start of December. But what I didn’t know was that this new place, which had started only the previous October, i.e. two months prior, was already having the same problem as my two-time ex-employer in Changwon, except with adults, which beggared belief as it seemed to be in a prime location – in deepest Jung-gu with potential students milling all around! However, we had a holiday on Christmas Day and when we came back on the 26th, Jazzy, my friendly coworker, broke the bad news to me just as we were in the final teaching period of the evening (which you may recall was also a Friday): As of completion of classes, I was out of work. Again!
Sometimes it seems to me as if trying to put together a reasonable and stable lifestyle in Korea is like trying to build a house on a sand bank… but thankfully all of the contacts, information and web links were still organised – and still ongoing – on my computer from the previous three months, and eventually led me (via a temporary winter camp job in Changwon) to where I am now, down in Okpo. And after the initial six months here, everything is stable again. For now.
But here we discover an important point: the search for employment should be ongoing. I have a constant stream of e-mail notifications and e-zines coming in to various Inboxes, which automates the process considerably; this is the product of years of signing up on different recruitment web sites, and keeping them relatively updated, periodically. I also have contacts with a range of recruiters, although I do not bother them often because of this. It seems to indicate the wisdom of avoiding the most popular places when looking for jobs; although, when asked, many people with experience might recommend a site like ESLCafe, in reality it is getting hammered and likewise with the advertisers there. When Charles contacted me, regarding the job in Daegu, it was because they had found my details at the Korea4home web site, which in point of fact I had almost forgotten about and was in need of updating. I have set up e-mail accounts and apps to deliver most of them to my cell phone and, more latterly, to my tablet; both devices also carry copies of essential documents for correspondence when mobile.
Surprisingly, I almost ended up at a kids’ hagwon in Seoul, as the manageress there was desperate to replace an American teacher who wanted to return home at very short notice due to health problems in his family (and surprisingly perhaps, despite my misgivings, I do regret this a bit, in part because of the experience I would have had with the technology). But the teacher changed his mind suddenly and I was out on my ear (again), but the manageress there had been very serious about signing me up ASAP, and had assured me that the job was easy because it was all electronic (based upon a tablet platform, you probably know the chain) and my age was not an issue (I had just turned 52 in October)!
I was in the right place, at the right time… it’s that ‘recurring theme’ again…
Because the last few years have been so choppy, and because the tables have had to be turned so that it was myself who fired the bosses rather than the other way around, remaining in a positive frame of mind has been difficult, but the realisation has come to me that I should not become despondent about finding new employment here as I grow older; the jobs are still there. There have also been changes in documents and visa issuances which have allowed me to stay and left me feeling much more confident. Plus, I had been looking at the possibility of shifting to another country, and it was while I was conducting my job search in January that an FAQ on a Cambodia-related recruiting web site finally put my situation into perspective: when asked whether there was any difficulty about being an ‘older’ job candidate, the (native speaker) recruiter responded that ultimately there was no requirement other than patience waiting for a new job to come along – in other words, yes, an older candidate can get a job (in Cambodia), but they just have to accept that it takes longer.
And that little light came on in my head, finally.
And so I end this piece by returning to the point mentioned about about pessimism: there is too much of it from foreigners directed against their own personal misfortunes in Korea. I am not talking here about (say) crimes committed here against foreigners, but rather the frame of mind which causes them to go online and vent their spleen rather than seeking viable alternatives or new directions. All you have to do is look at your options as they present themselves to you, judge which is best (and what changes you may have to undertake), then make your decision and stick to it. This means accepting the initial difficulties you may encounter and being patient while they resolve themselves. In my latest position, this latter stage is now complete, and a new semester began a few weeks ago; and after the initial paperwork was completed, until the next semester, the work is relatively light.
We should remember that a foreigner already resident here has some advantages over the neophyte, not least that they already have their documents deposited, and the recruitment process is relatively straightforward and mechanical. Five out of the last six jobs I have had did not even have a formal ‘interview’; two of them were temporary returns to former employers where I was already a known quantity. I now have a track record of some thirteen years since deciding that my attempt to have a career in science was leading me exactly nowhere and I needed to make a change; and although I was not ultimately able to make the change I planned for in the beginning, the whole thing has been, and continues to be, something of an adventure, although I would definitely describe myself as ‘less adventurous than some’.
But the bottom line is that planning and patience win the day. I was fortunate to be offered a temporary position on a winter camp in Changwon and this allowed me to be in the right place at the right time to be offered my current position, ironically because most of the company’s existing staff were up north around Seoul and liked it there, thank you very much, and were apparently sniffy about coming down south to Geoje, even though there seems very little wrong with the place. They liked their city lights and the entertainments that went with them, it seems.
So we conclude that life has dealt us a salutary lesson. Planning, patience, preparation, an adaptable attitude and being located conveniently have allowed my career here to continue. To those who complain to me endlessly about dwindling job opportunities and getting older, I offer this lesson to you.
August 10th 2015
Edited: October 2nd 2015
Future Projects
Posted by Andrew | Filed under Living in Korea
Tags: apartment, buying, card, career, change, control, education, elementary, elementary school, employment, English, foreigner, hagwon, job, knowledge, Korea, lifestyle, Linux, plan, planning, public, public school, school, South Korea, teacher, teaching english, writing
