BWD Blues

Got a job offer to teach in Bintaro, just outside of the massive metropolis of Jakarta, Indonesia. As luck would have it I have a friend in Bintaro. A South African gal who I taught, drank gin/tonic and ate expertly cooked Indonesian green curry with in S. Korea. She checked the place out and summed it up in two words, twice. The first two words were, "they stink," and the second two words were, "stay away!" Now I know, well more accurately I've HEARD how nice it is when you are overseas and you get a visit from friends or family. Lookin' at YOU friends and family! Telling ME it's been too long and I should get my ass on a plane and get home for a visit. To Canada. A place I've already seen. Any of you, friends and family, (you know who you are), ever seen Korea? Asia? For the better part of 15 years I was over there with enough money and spare time to squire any visitor around the must-see... anyway I'm off the rails here, the school in Bintaro my friend Annemarie looked into doesn't sponsor your visa, the don't pay airfare, they don't provide accommodations, they always give split shifts, they always make you work on Saturdays, they don't even pay the legally mandated salary of 10 million rupiah, (about 1000 bucks), a month, (I was offered 7,750,000 and the cheapest craphole in Bintaro to live is 3,000,000 a month), they don't pay for overtime but give it to you consistently, they call you up at 7:50 to order you to get over to the school and teach a class at 8:00, they treat their workers like livestock and don't even care if they EVER get a single teacher to sign up for a second year. I read online that lots of people who own better schools stand outside EF's, (English First. It's a franchise), and hand out business cards to disgruntled teachers knowing they'll be jumping ship soon. So yeah this is just SOME of the bad stuff I've heard about them. They DO stink. And despite maybe wanting a visit from an old friend, Annemarie told me to stay away.

So I send an email to a Craig Williams, director of studies at EF Cibubar telling him that I've heard some bad things about EF and the corporation that owns them, Swara Group, and I go down the list. Do you pay for overtime, do you sponsor your workers etc. etc. etc... He gets back to me, a bit offended apparently and proceeds to tell me, the DIRECTOR of what he assures me is "the best English school in all of Indonesia," tells me that people who teach at EF are "highly SORT after" by language schools all over the world. So I send him back an email pointing out the English error and drawing his attention to the message posting sites that have all kinds of former EF employees telling their horror stories and again summarize these stories in a list of things that have lead to my decision NOT to work for EF or Swara Group. His reply, and again I am not kidding here, was basically, "You are very wrong. This school is not owned by Swara Group." Doesn't even try to deny any of the other stuff and at the end of the email he says, "You have my offer, I hope you take it."

This brought me back to my first year in Korea. The end of that year. A year that included a massive financial crisis called "The IMF Crisis" by Koreans that devalued the Korean won by about 50% effectively cutting my salary in half; MANY last second schedule changes; multiple split shifts every month; about 9 colds getting used to the new germs in Korea; a stretch of 12 consecutive Saturdays worked, ruining the weekend sightseeing plans, for a "bonus" that turned out to be a watermelon - divided between THREE teachers; and at the end of that year, Mr. Lee the hagwon boss, after just buying a new van for the school and a bunch of property, is telling us, the remaining three teachers, Karen, Kim and me, that we won't be getting our severance pay. That's a bonus of one month's pay for completing your one-year contract. One of the former teachers there, and American chick named Darcy, didn't get her severance and trashed the hagwon before she left. I think she did some jail time for that. Anyway, Mr. Lee, after stealing a couple thousand bucks from all three of us says that I am a good teacher and he will give me a "big bonus" if I sign another one-year contract. And he's dead serious!

How do people become like Craig Williams and Mr. Lee? But I fully expect I'll have to deal with someone just like them again if I end up taking a deal to work overseas again. It's either that or continue spinning my wheels in Canada the land of the BWD. What, you might ask, is a BWD? You can blame my subconscious for that. I was dreaming in rap. What you never do that? I swear, I was dreaming in rap. There was a song in my dream called BWD. I woke up and wrote down as much as I could remember, added some, tweaked it a bit and this was the result:

BWD

I'm a bitch with a degree. I'm gonna make you OBEY me.
Over-regulate society. That's right, uh huh I'm a

BWD

Out of the office to the classroom I go. I'm there to learn what I already know.
Cuz they tell me no employer will call, unless I got that piece of paper on the wall.
They tell me this will help me at work. They tell me cuz they think I'm a jerk.
Teach me what I do and show me how, HEY, this ain't helping cuz I'm not at work now.

BWD

They're out to train and educate me. Turn this world into daytime T.V.
They will incorporate the university. That's right, uh huh, I said it

BWD

Spent over 5 years traveling abroad. They flagged as "dormant" my Social Insurance Card.
My birth cert., passport and my driver's licence, gee, can't be replaced until I show them two pieces of I.D.

BWD

I'm a bitch with a degree. I'm gonna force you to act like you respect me.
I'm gonna govern all of you but not me. Uh uh, uh uh, not me.

BWD

Ain't got no time to be anybody's wife. I got to give this drowning fish the kiss of life.
Love and compassion coming out of my ears. I'm afraid of a world with too many fears.

BWD

I wanna bubble wrap everything I see. I will hurt you so you can't hurt me.
Oh why can't everybody be exactly like me? Uh uh, uh huh, forget it.

BWD

That probably got into my head because of my visit yesterday to a government office in Calgary to prove that I am me. I WISH I had the imagination to make this shit up! I've been back in Canada for a few years now. I've had several jobs, lived in several places, applied for and received several criminal record checks, got my passport renewed, got my Alberta Health card, and I'm sure did other things that required my social insurance number. I was told that my social insurance number had been flagged as dormant because it had not been used in over 5 years. I still can't figure that out. So I had to go down to their office with identification and all the proof I had that I had been working overseas. Now, they don't give records of employment in Korea but they DO keep track of pension and give it back to you at the end of your contract or the end of your time in Korea. And, of course, THAT is Social Insurance Number-based too. I told the girl who required me to prove I exist that she could just call the pension office. I'm sure they have better records of my time overseas than I do. Well, no, government agencies don't communicate with each other. I reckon it's gotta be because even government agencies don't like calling government agencies and going through the requisite telephone gymnastics. So they make ME jump through all the hoops they can.

It wasn't long ago that I had to do this exact same thing for two BWD's in Vancouver at the customs office to prove that I was in Korea and all the stuff in my shipment was my furniture, clothes and living essentials that just arrived at the port on a boat from Korea. They saw my passport stamps but that wasn't enough. I showed them two teacher's cards from universities I had taught at. Not convincing enough. I said a few things in Korean. Didn't work. Then I told them that on my blog I had a copy of a cable bill from Korea. The agent brought up my blog, read it for a while, had a chuckle because it was complaining about bureaucracy alarmingly similar to exactly what she was doing, then said, "Okay I believe you were in Korea." She didn't even SEE the cable bill. Because of my Korean Chronicles blog with stories about my experiences in Korea I was able to get MY stuff that they were holding hostage. I'd hate to think what would have happened otherwise.

Yesterday I brought a year by year summary of all the places, with addresses, where I had worked in Korea. I brought those two teacher's cards. I brought reference letters from most of the places I'd worked. I brought my old passport with the work visas in it. I brought the signed and stamped contract of the job I was going to get but didn't work out because the criminal record check arrived too late. I also brought that criminal record check. I brought envelopes with some of my personal addresses on them. I brought a picture of all the Chonnam teachers including me in a cardboard holder with the Chonnam University seal on it. I brought a scan of my last alien card in Korea. I brought a magazine with my name and my writing in it. I brought a scan of an article from ANOTHER magazine I had written. It even had my picture in it. I brought my fingerprinting form from a Korean police office. I brought the waybill from that shipment of stuff from Korea mentioned above. I brought a scan of my university degree verified and stamped by the Korean Consul General in Vancouver. I danced Gangnam style for crying out loud!

She says, "Well I would like a list of all your addresses, but you may have enough here to substantiate that you are indeed who you say you are." I came this |___| close to saying, "Hey, BWD, I'm afraid I'm gonna need YOU to show me some proof that you are indeed who YOU claim to be." But I hadn't invented "BWD" then so I couldn't have said it. There were the people in the schools in Victoria, all BWD's, telling me that my TESL certificate did not meet the standards of Canada TESL, (the one and only standard actually being payment to Canada TESL), there were the two BWD's who were very sweetly showing me that the reason I couldn't find a decent job in Canada was that I just wasn't searching in the correct manner. There were BWD's at every job I've had here in Canada doing their best to make the job more difficult. I guess it all built up and subconsciously I knew I hadda rap it on out know what I'm seng dawg?

BWD's, cain't do as I please, gon drive me back overseas, dayum BWD's.

I think I'll go plant some dope. Either I get rich or get sent to prison. Either way I eat better than I do now and don't work nearly as hard.