Too much and too little

For the past couple of years I've been working here in Busan at the YMCA Language School, it's not really a difficult job for a literate person who's not shy around people. It's probably the easiest job I've had in many, many years of working.

The hours combined with the isolation are a little much. I teach adult conversation classes from 0630 to 0830 each morning, then I'm "off" until the afternoon. I teach children from 1500 to 1800 or so. The only problem with it is that the time in between is really pretty much a waste. My part of the city has few, if any, English-speaking foreigners, so there's little opportunity for social activities, and my evenings are similar(except weekends). The nearest part of the city where I have any friends is about an hour away by subway. So my weeks are pretty empty of company.

I've always been somewhere between social and loner, so it wasn't so hard for the first year, but the shine is gone off the neighbourhood now, so I'm pretty much bored and lonely.

I decided recently that I'd had enough of this and that I'd find a new job in a part of the city with a bit more to offer me in the way of social life. This, it turns out, was a mistake. In Korea your employer owns your visa and unless they give you a formal, written release letter the only way you can change jobs is to leave the country. Now, to me, this is little better than indentured servitude. I'm unaware of the facts of employment for foreign nationals in Canada, but I'm pretty sure that they aren't "owned" (albeit only for one year of "indenture") by their employers.

My buddy Keith, worried about my mental health, urged my former recruiter to find me a different job. And they did, indeed. I was offered a job teaching in a public school near the part of the city I wanted to live in. The job hours were a bit more reasonable (though technically longer) 0900 to 1630 daily, but only about 2 hours of classroom time. The other hours were for "preparation". The other bonus was that the school paid about 20% better and they had an organised curriculum with some lesson plans available. The YMCA doesn't even give me books to use with most of my children's classes.

Anyway, I told my boss I had been offered a new job and that I'd like a letter of release with 2 months notice. She said, she'd have to think about it for a few days. Now that in itself was ridiculous, I knew that this was an attempt to delay an inevitable confrontation (Asians generally prefer non-confrontational methods, which only serves to make most Westerners angry in many situations).

So, finally, at the end of a week, she told me that they "couldn't" (I corrected her and told her that the correct verb to use in her situation is "won't"). They couldn't find a new teacher and she had looked "very hard", in 4 days, over the Christmas holiday. Bullshit, I hate it.

The next thing is something that I could have handled better, perhaps, but I really didn't (and still don't) care. I asked for my degree certificate back (I intended to apply for work in other countries). After a day, I was told that they hadn't gotten it back from Korean Immigration, I asked for the numbers and names of people she called, so that I could have my recruiter speak to them. No names or numbers were supplied, of course. Then a day later I was told that she thought they had given it back to me already (they hadn't). It was at this point that I lost it. I was so angry that I was shaking and turning purple, I scared myself, and then I started shouting at her at the front desk of the school. I could tell she was terrified, she looked like she wanted to cry and crawl under her desk. I really didn't care. My degree certificate is essential for teaching in a lot of places, for some bureaucratic reason it's the only document they'll accept as proof. MUN doesn't EVER issue new ones. She'd just lost an irreplacable document that had taken $30000 and many years for me to earn. I told her I would return to work when she could present me with my degree certificate. Oddly enough, about an hour later it miraculously turned up. The next day she took me into a classroom and chewed me out for yelling at her and undermining her "authority". I told her that as far as I was concerned her authority was meaningless if she could be so irreponsible. She also tried to get me to apologise, which prompted me to call her an "idiot". She then said that she really didn't want me working there anymore because I was too disrespectful, so I told her that if she didn't want me there she was welcome to fire me, she certainly had that privelege. Unfortunately she declined this opportunity.

So, now I'm just counting my days. Next time I'm going to another country. One without crazy indenture laws. A friend has a line on an IT job in Asia and apparently I'm on the short list, but I'm not holding my breath. Or, more correctly, I'm trying not to hope too much for it. It'd be pretty sweet though...

Yogurt

Last weekend I visited my friends Chris and Tanya here in Busan (they're from St. John's, but they've been here for about 8 years now)

They showed me yogurt that they made in their electric rice cooker. It was honest to God, real fresh yogurt. I tried it out this weekend and it was stupidly easy to make.

1) fill rice cooker pot with water and set it to "Warm" (NOT "Cook")
2) pour a small (100ml) bottle of active culture yogurt drink into a 1 litre plastic container and then top up with milk. Seal the container and drop it into the water in the cooker.
3) close the cooker and wait 12 hours.
4) turn off the cooker, let cool, drain, refrigerate and eat.

I haven't eaten it yet, it's still too warm. So this may be my last blog entry. ;)

Blogging blackout

Okay, so I've been asked many times to keep my blog current and many people have just stopped reading it. I must confess that I've been in a relatively negative frame of mind this past while, for a variety of reasons that I'll divulge in later posts, and I didn't really want to turn this into a wall of whining.

So, for now I'll continue writing and hopefully post a little more often.

Home and away

Today I had a class with a middle school student, her English nickname is Amy. She was my only student in the class so I decided we'd just do some free talking. Conversation tends to work better with her than structured lessons, she enjoys it more and talks a lot more.

We started talking about food (an ever popular topic) and I asked her what her favourite foreign food was. I expected the usual, Italian or Chinese.

She kind of surprised me when she responded, "Canadian food".
"But Canadian food is pretty much the same as what Americans eat", I said, "it's not really unique to Canada."
She smiled a funny, proud little smile, "I like moose meat."
I nearly fell off my chair. She made me instantly homesick for a moment.
Apparently, she has another Canadian teacher at her middle school and he gave the students moose.

Carry on, brother. Spread the love.

October's here

This week past my Uncle Doug passed away. He had been in the hospital for a while due to complications of surgery.

He was a straightforward man, a bit rough in character but honest. I liked him and respected him though I can't really say we were terribly close. I admired his ability to say things that he thought, without any velvet gloves. He didn't seem to care if anybody else agreed. One tough character and a great man. I find that his death has hit me much harder than I might expect. Sometimes you don't really know how you feel about people until they're no longer there.

Godspeed, Doug. I'll see you later on.

August wrap-up

Wow, it's so hard to believe I've been back in Korea for almost two months!!

It's been a strange month for me (aren't they all with me, though?)

My grandfather, Allan White passed away this month. He was 96 years old and he had a good life and his last years were pretty good. Aside from crippling arthritis that limited his mobility he was pretty damned healthy for his years. If I live to be anywhere near that age I'd be lucky to be as healthy as he was.

He wasn't an educated man but he kept learning things and reading throughout his life. He went to bed early, rose early, worked hard, went to church and had simple pleasures. He was kind and he lived simply. Many of the things that I hold as ideals of a good life, or a well-spent life, are based on how he lived. I try to measure my own life and ways of living against his yardstick.

Other things this month have been mainly the usual routine of getting settled. I moved my furniture back from a friend's apartment, so I have my kitchen gear and spices again. I bought some furniture, a sofa, a table and a funky Korean traditional painting of some crazy horses.

I didn't bother with a bed this time, I'm sleeping on a traditional Korean floor pad (called a 'yo') and I find it pretty comfortable. Last year I had a tiny apartment, about the size of a very small bedroom with an attached bathroom, so the bed took up most of my floor space.

This year my apartment is still small by Western standards, but it's probably twice the size of last year's digs. I have a decent size kitchen nook and with a table and a sofa I feel like I'm at home. Last year I felt like I was in jail because I only had a bed.

My buddy Keith and his girlfriend, Jill, came back to Busan this month. It looks like we might try to get out camping in September. There's a big Harvest Moon holiday coming up, but since everybody tries to go home for the holiday it'll probably be massively crazy trying to travel. We'll see what happens. I predict a drunken barbecue and maybe camping later in the fall, but who knows?

Keith floated a tentative plan to rent a space for a woodworking shop. We both enjoy woodworking but it's a bit messy and space-consuming to pursue in a small apartment. We've got a few tools between us. I've managed to assemble a relatively complete kit of basic woodworking handtools but haven't gotten a lot of use out of them yet. I started projects for a table and a bedframe and have them partially completed but my woodworking was curtailed by complaints from my downstairs neighbour about sawing noises, hehehe.

I'm really just getting settled away and I'm already two months in, it looks like I'll be here for a nice long while. I'm enjoying being a foreigner and everything that goes along with that. They say you can always go home but since I have no idea where that is and no place of my own anywhere I suppose that I'm happier living out here in the world.

Movie Meme: Dystopia Edition

I found this on the blog of another foreign teacher, ::A Geek in Korea:::

Copy the list and BOLD the movies you have seen. Post yours in the comments, or on your own blog.

1. Metropolis (1927)
   
2. A Clockwork Orange (1971)
   
3. Brazil (1985)
   
4. Wings of Desire (1987)
   
5. Blade Runner (1982)
   
6. Children of Men (2006)
   
7. The Matrix (1999)
   
8. Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (1981)
   
9. Minority Report (2002)
   
10. Delicatessen (1991)
    
11. Sleeper (1973)
    
12. The Trial (1962)
    
13. Alphaville (1965)
    
14. Twelve Monkeys (1995)
    
15. Serenity (2005)
    
16. Pleasantville (1998)
    
17. Ghost in the Shell (1995)
    
18. Battle Royale (2000)
    
19. RoboCop (1987)
    
20. Akira (1988)
    
21. The City of Lost Children (1995)
    
22. Planet of the Apes (1968)
    
23. V for Vendetta (2005)
    
24. Metropolis (2001)
    
25. Gattaca (1997)
    
26. Fahrenheit 451 (1966)
    
27. On The Beach (1959)
    
28. Mad Max (1979)
    
29. Total Recall (1990)
    
30. Dark City (1998)
    
31. War Of the Worlds (1953)
    
32. District 13 (2004)
    
33. They Live (1988)
    
34. THX 1138 (1971)
    
35. Escape from New York (1981)
    
36. A Scanner Darkly (2006)
    
37. Silent Running (1972)
    
38. Artificial Intelligence: AI (2001)
    
39. Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984)
    
40. A Boy and His Dog (1975)(www.archive.org)
    
41. Soylent Green (1973)
    
42. I, Robot (2004)
    
43. Logan’s Run (1976)
    
44. Strange Days (1995)
    
45. Idiocracy (2006)
    
46. Death Race 2000 (1975)
    
47. Rollerball (1975)
    
48. Starship Troopers (1997)
    
49. One Point O (2004)
    
50. Equilibrium (2002)

Original list is from Top 50 Dystopian Movies of All Time at Snarkerati, an interesting looking movie new site that I have yet to investigate.

Geek adds: "This is my favorite type of genre film. I can’t wait till I finish reading The Road and it is released as a movie."

It's my favourite type of movie, too. I think most geeks enjoy watching dystopian films because they're usually about how technology and the future are going to be awful. Many geeks have suffered at the hands of the technology they love and seeing get beaten on and maligned this way appeals to some sense of schadenfreude. Another theme that appeals to geeks is the abuse of technology (and associated freedoms) by authorities that don't understand it.

I have seen almost everything on this list but it's far from a complete listing of dystopian themes in film. Bunker Palace Hotel is one I've watched recently, hard to find but a good film. Another great one is Richard III. Or Kafka, a simply awesome film. There are lots of these films, maybe it's a sign of our impotent frustrations in dealing with modern bureaucracy.