Mok Mok Mokpo Goodbye

I'm typing this on my computer that is already feeling better having been unhooked from that crappy Hanaro cable internet and rehooked to the Seogang College service, which I get for free! The only bug I've found to this point is that I can't use Scrabulous on Facebook. ?????

The past week has been a memorable one. Monday, (Aug. 18), after work I just walked in the door of my large, two-bedroom, but haunted, Mokpo apartment and the phone rang. It was my new supervisor, (old friend), Jung. He asked me for the exact date of my move. I told him I'd be doing that during the last week of August as I had told him way back in May (?). He said, "But you have to work then." And so began the panic that was this past week. I remember the first word I said to Jung. A word I'd never used around him before. "FUCK!"

You see, when I am handed a contract that is dated Sept. 1, I think I'm going to start Sept. 1. And when I am answering questions about when I'll be finishing my other contract and NOT told there will be any conflict, I assume there won't be any conflict. I was told by Jung that he expected me to remember from 3 years ago when I taught here before that we start one week earlier than other schools. Eye roll.

So I had to choose whether to quit immediately and inconvenience 9 students for 9 hours at Mokpo U., a school I had taught at for 6 months, or stay on at Mokpo U. for the remainder of the week and start my new contract at Seogang College, where I'd worked for a year before, a week late inconveniencing 150 students for about 60 hours. Seogang also treated me better than Mokpo, gave me more holidays, paid me way more, allowed me to teach at camps for extra dough and gave me a dorm room free from succubi and incubi. It was a no-brainer. I called my Mokpo supervisor and told her I had to go to quit. Then I packed a bag and went to Gwangju.

I picked up my criminal record check from my new college and took it to Seoul on Tuesday to get it notarized. I had to wait till Wednesday because the Canadian Embassy is only open from 8:30-11:30 and I couldn't get there early enough on Tuesday. I also had to get a blood test done for AIDS and a urine test for drugs. I figured I'd do that while in I Tae Won at the clinic there. I found out that it would take a week so decided to wait till I got back to Gwangju. Wednesday afternoon I told Jung that we should go to the immigration office and apply for my visa before I got my blood/urine tests because they were needed for my alien card renewal, not for the visa. My alien card is still good till Feb. so I could work Monday without the blood/urine test. But I couldn't work without applying for the visa. He was reluctant to say the least. But he drove me down there and although it was an angry afternoon we got it done. So I'm cleared to work Monday and after I get the body fluid tests I'll hand in all the paperwork and they'll start making me legal for another year.

Jung called a hospital in Gwangju that could do acceptable blood and urine tests and they said the results would be in in a day. I couldn't go on the Wednesday so I went the next day and got the tests done. They said the results would be in on Monday. That's 4 days, not 1. Closer to the week I predicted. But with that all done I went back to Mokpo and packed up all my stuff Thursday afternoon and Friday. Then Saturday morning I trucked it all to Gwangju and spent the whole afternoon Saturday unpacking and arranging. Not easy to fit a two bedroom apartment full of stuff into a dorm room. Plus I had to leave room for a new dresser and a big fridge. I think I've done it though.

Today is Sunday and I'm waiting for a call from another Mokpo teacher. I'm going to give her the attendance from some of my summer classes that I mistakenly took with me in the move. Plus I'm going to look around for a cheap fridge. I have a friend who can get me a good one from Samsung cuz he works there, but I'll have to wait two weeks. That's too long. I'll probly have a fridge by the end of the day. I already have the dresser. THAT was a story!

I found a perfect dresser for my room and it was only 100 bucks. Great deal! So I bought it and hopped into the delivery truck with the driver. All the way to the college he was asking me why I don't have a wife or girlfriend. It got more and more personal until finally he was making gestures about penis and vagina size and finally he asked me how big my Johnson was and REACHED OVER to grab a handful!!! TWICE! Poor guy. So lonely he wanted a gay relationship with someone he couldn't even talk to.

Anyway, there are a couple things that have me thinking. First of all, why are there any hospitals in Korea where blood and urine tests aren't acceptable? If they can screw THAT up so regularly that the government doesn't allow their tests on legal documents, what else do they screw up regularly? And rather than let people pay money to go to hospitals that screw things up regularly, shouldn't they just close them down? I'm not sure though, maybe Korean don't mind a doctor who may or may NOT know what the hell he's, (or she's), doing. I've been to one of these places. My bargain basement doctor told me that men can't get breast cancer.

The second concern I have is that as I was leaving immigration on Wednesday afternoon the worker told me to get the fluid tests AND a physical exam. That's the kind of thing the tribulation office tends to do. They are constantly adding new and completely unnecessary missions for foreigners to complete in order to gain the privelege of working in Korea. I had rubber glove prostate test nightmares Wednesday night before going into the hospital Thursday for the tests but when I got there they asked if I had eaten breakfast. Two pieces of pizza and some of Kasia's best water cooler coffee qualified. (Her coffee maker broke that morning). So I couldn't get the physical. OH DARN!!! But I'm worried that they will hold up my application because of that. I'm also worried that even though I've asked several times about pictures and they've told me I don't need any, they'll ask me Monday, "Where are your pictures?"

However, I've already got a little more jump in my step being back in Gwangju where I belong and with just a little luck, immigration will just take my papers on Monday and do their job without teasing me any more.

Anyway, I have to finish unpacking, buy a fridge, load that fridge up and maybe plan a couple of lessons for tomorrow. I'm a Gwangjuian again. Gwangjuite? Gwangjuer. Gwangjui? Whatever.

I've Almost Made it Through Another Summer

Summer is different things to different people. It used to be my favourite season. Mostly because of summer holidays, swimming at the lake or in pools, bikini babes, playing beerball, water sports, summer romance, cruising in the car in the cool of the night listening to tunes, camping in the woods, fishing my face off, eating about a dozen popsicles a day, barbecues, yearly family reunion at Christina Lake, sprinklers, golfing my face off, new summer music that will forever remind me of the fun I had during the summer it was new, seeing the new summer movies sometimes at the drive-in, skinny dipping and moon tanning, fresh fruit, the smell of Noxzema on sunburns, ball tournaments, cheering for the swim team, hunkering down in my sleeping bag listening to the rain tapping on my tent fly, waking up early for golf or fishing, Muskol, bonfires with lots of hot dogs and marshmallows, road trips on the bike, the smell of a freshly cut lawn, cutting the lawn, carnivals, roofing, peeling skin off my nose and ears, fresh veggies and cold cuts, painting, lawnchairs-especially the reclining kind, radios outside, enjoying the cool of the summer rain, seeing deer, bear and moose, washing the car, growing tomatoes, corn on the cob, playing cards and boozin' it up,

Okay, stop right there! I've finally mentioned something associated with summer here in Korea. I can play cards and booze it up. All the other things - nope. Now I know you're saying, "Come on! Stop exaggerating! You can fish, camp, go on bike rides, golf, play the radio outside, blah blah blah blah blah in Korea!" And, yes, some of those things you can but they are all so different, and in bad ways, that as near as makes no difference, NO, I can't. For some of these things the substitutes you get are so bad it's WORSE than the real thing. Like popsicles. How hard is it to freeze Kool Aid then sell it for about 40 times what it's worth to fools like me who will buy it? Nothing like that here. Corn on the cob here is the stuff we feed to livestock. The summer rain just adds to the humidity and actually makes it feel HOTTER here. There are plenty of hot dogs in Korea but I defy you to find a bun. Atkins followers are about the only people happy about that. And you have to be careful when you buy bread here to wrap around your weenies that you don't get the corn bread or the sweet kind that's closer to cake. Fishing, please! I wouldn't eat anything I caught if I could figure out the whacky ways they fish here and catch anything. Golf is about 200 bucks a round. There are no lakes you can swim in and if you go to the beach the girls are wearing one-piece swimsuits and three t-shirts with BRAS underneath. THIS year, and only in Seoul, is the very first year that foreigners can rent ball fields in Korea. No grass, no lawns, no sprinklers, no lawnchairs. The music is getting a bit better but you still don't wanna hear it. Riding a bike is taking your life in your hands. I could go on but I won't. You get the picture.

Still, I have a lot to be thankful for here in Korea. Well maybe I overreached. I have at least one thing to be thankful for: a good job. Well, okay we're getting closer. At least I have a better job than I can get in my own country. There. So if you're ever wondering why I'm here...

But wait. There ARE things I can do that I can't do back home. And those are the real things that keep me here. And I can take a little trip and find some of the things I miss about summer back in Canada too. I've said for years now that the best thing about living in Korea is the surrounding countries. Thailand, Indonesia, Viet Nam, Cambodia, Laos and my favourite - the Philippines. I'm not leaving Korea till I've seen as much of these countries as I can. It would be a sin not to! The golfing is great in Thailand and CHEAP. You can't go anywhere without seeing a movie on a big screen. The fresh fruit is amazing too! You haven't been to Thailand till you've had the iced pineapple on the beach. And speaking of the beach, if you're at the right one the girls sometimes only wear HALF a bikini!

In the Phils I swim every day. Usually more than once. Snorkelling, water sports, barbecues and bonfires. No problem. They have good music. GREAT live bands. The girls are super cute and lots of fun. A summer romance in the Philippines is NOT out of the question. It's hard to know if the gal likes you or your wallet but there are few places I can think of better for boozin' it up so I'm usually feeling too good to care while I'm there! REAL hot dogs with buns at any Jolly Bee. Even fishing. I think I'll try that next time I go.

Unfortunately, this summer I'm stuck in Korea. I'm trying to make the best of it. I make potato salad but it's just not as good when I'm not sitting on a lawn chair trying to balance it on my knees on a paper plate with a broken plastic fork and a piece of charred animal flesh beside it.

Yesterday I went on a boat trip around the little Mokpo bay. It was pretty nice actually. Unfortunately I had to walk there because the place I work didn't care enough to offer me a ride, give me the number of a bus I could take or even tell me where and when it was. They just told me there was an "outing" some time on Saturday with the 50 teachers we've been teaching this past week. The other teachers tried to find out if I knew where I was going but they made the mistake of asking administration who will always in Korea be the bearers of news they assume you want to hear particularly if it's the news that requires no effort on their part. Regardless of whether it's the truth or not. They can always say, "I'm sorry" later.

This is a shot I took while I was searching for the teachers. This guy is fishing at the waterfront. See the little orange stick out front? That's his float. And the white things in the water are jellyfish. LOADS of them on this day.

But being a veteran of Korea I've been through this countless times and I know the foreign teachers are the last people to know what WE are supposed to be doing and it's usually only through our own devices that we can find out. I know that my main asset in Korea is not my amazing educational training, not my experience in a quality educational system, not my uncanny knack for improving every student's English ability while maintaining a casual and fun classroom atmosphere, it's making an incompetent administration look golden. More business than education. I always have to keep that in mind. And I did it again on Saturday. Against all odds, after an hour of looking, with an hour's worth of sweat soaked through shirt and shorts, and with a stone dead cell phone so nobody could call me at the last minute, I found the group and hooked up with them all for the harbour ferry trip. THIS is summer fun in Korea! But like I said, it actually WAS fun. I guess everything is relative.

These are the teachers when we first got on the ferry. That blonde is Jocelyn. She's a Nelson gal. The roof had a sprinkler system on it that was supposed to keep this area cool but it didn't.

This is the sprinkler system.

After the ferry tour we went out for "sam gyup sal" at a local restaurant. If you're in Mokpo go to "Ha Ru Ae" restaurant. FANTASTIC sam gyup sal. Although I've never met a sam gyup sal I didn't like. THIS is as close as I'll get to barbecue here this summer.

So I guess these'll be my summer pictures. Wow! Nothing like last summer! But here's hoping next summer will be better.

Dark Days for the Dude

That was a snarky post the last one. I figured I'd best take some time off. Blogging that is. I'm at school all day every day these days and it's supposed to be summer "holidays". They're getting as much out of me as they can before I go. I'm just getting close to the end of the contract and these are always dark days wondering what's in store for me at the tribulation, (immigration), office THIS time. So "I appologize for my bellicosity. I've been coughin' up blood, peein' up blood, bleedin'. Go through twelve o' these suits a day. It takes a big man to admit when he's wrong and I am not a big man." (Irwin R. Fletcher, aka Igor Stravinsky). I've also been watching movies to kill time. Heh heh.

So I reckoned I'd start this post with a couple pics that will make for a lighter mood. Is that great or what? The Simpsons will never be beat for coolness. Unless they make a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon. Nah, still not as cool. A little history here: I like that they have Marge as Ringo. She actually was a big fan of his and painted his picture. She wrote him a letter and sent him the painting, which he liked. MANY years later his reply to her letter reached her just as she was questioning her talent as a painter. I believe Ringo called the painting, "fab". That's when Marge got the courage to paint the nude Burns. And Bart with the smoke, (or 'fag' "in the parlance of our times", (Jeffrey, "Dude", Lebowsky, and Maude Lebowsky, no relation), Homer with the John Lennon shoulder turn. Simpsons RULE!!!!

I got these pics from Facebook. I think my blog is gonna suffer because of Facebook. It's a real time waster. But I like it. And speaking of wasting time, that's pretty much what I've been doing for the last little while when not working. I'll go out and walk in the heat of the night sometimes but it's not much fun. Last night was the first night in a couple months I went out for a walk and enjoyed it again. It was a little bit cooler than usual. So by the end of the walk I was taking unnecessary stairs, jumping to touch overhanging tree branches, jogging a bit, and even had dry spots on my shirt! I was NOT exhausted like I usually am on the hot walks. PLUS I saw a band from Bolivia down at the waterfront. They were really great. Playing guitars, bamboo flutes of all sizes, shakers, bongos and singing in nice harmony.

There was a huge crowd at a barge that was all lit up and it was playing just off shore. The speakers were right on the path though and much too loud. It was the normal, Korean, made for teenage girl pop music lip synching crap with dozens of back-up dancers. It wasn't just teenage girls in the crowd though. I've seen fifty blues, rock, jazz, folk etc. bands in Korea that could blow that band literally out of the water. But they're like purple cars here: not very popular. Cars with ANY colour for that matter. So it was kinda nice to be watching the better band with the smaller crowd. But I couldn't stop walking for too long or the mosquitoes would find me. Only stayed for a couple songs.

I've been trying to walk as much as possible lately. I tried on a size 40 pair of pants that didn't fit. Thing is, I'm actually working normal hours these days. Like a normal job I mean. I leave the house at 8 and get home at 5. And I'm soaking through a few shirts a day so there's nothing like a cold brew when I get home. Or two. Or three. Or fore. Or fve. Or sex. he he he he he he. So by the time I eat supper and sober up it's the guilt that gets me off my arse and out to walk. And I don't think I am winning here. I think I'm still taking on more calories than I'm burning even with the gallons of sweat every day. As I type this I'm on my third beer and the air is cooling down a bit. It's nearly 7 so I think I'm gonna have some pork roast and veggies soon. Then it's off to the waterfront. I think it's the last day of the "maritime" festival here so we'll see what's doin' down there. I hope to see the Bolivians again.

"If your Uncle Jack helped you off an elephant, would you help your Uncle Jack off an elephant?" TM.