Patience is a virtue... that is losing its marketability.

?4u: Sup? H r u? ZZZZ?!?! WTH, bro? Ruok? Nv? Gg? Fine then fu Q! LOL! J.K. TTFN.

Should I feel ashamed to have had the ability, if not the laziness, to write that first line? I kind of think I should. Being a lover of the language, an English major, one who appreciates the descriptive, eloquent, and not necessarily economical prose of the classic authors I should consider this kind of communication the antithesis of creativity. It's reductivism at its worst in that nothing has been gained from what was lost except time and keystrokes. Time and effort. The world is in a hurry to reduce time and effort. They're rushing around desperately seeking methods and ideas to reduce the rushing and desperation of our daily lives. Drinking Red Bull, attention spans reverting to childhood levels, heartrates soaring, stress peaking, excitement maxxing out all so they can save a little extra time every day to complain instantaneously to all their friends on all their various electronic devices about how bored they are.

What ever happened to "stop and smell the roses?" "All good things come to those who wait." "The journey is half the fun." What happened to "patience is a virtue?" I have been in Korea over a month now without a phone. Yes, I have risen to legendary status in the country already. There are those who don't believe I exist. Some tell tales of sightings that are scoffed at by others. A few have even had encounters with me and taken out-of-focus smart phone shots of me. Like this:

Nobody can PROVE I am more than just a conspiracy theory, but I DO exist! I DO! It IS possible to live for long periods of time without a phone!

While typing this a friend messaged me on Facebook and asked me to call him. I messaged another friend on Facebook and asked if I could use her phone later tonight to call the friend. DANG! Talk about ruining a perfectly good self-righteous rant!

But why must we call? Why do we need to Skype. Videochat? What's wrong with email? Texting? I still write LETTERS! And MAIL them! And wait months for a reply! Sometimes don't get one because nobody knows where to mail a letter to me. But I'm okay with that. So long as when we finally DO hook up on the phone, in a chatroom, texting or even, GASP, in person, we have good, quality time together. But this is not as easy as it is to just write down, is it? Not with the "Right Fucking Now" generation it's not! Ever see a group of youngsters get together and have deep, meaningful conversations? I don't. They meet up, go, "Hey. Sup?" "Sup?" Then they hang for hours together playing online games or chatting with other friends, and talking together about them a bit while they do so, until their phone battery dies and they are left to their very own conversational devices. Then it's, "Stupid I-phone bat life too short." "Me too. Later." "Yeah. Later."

It won't be long now until I'm a conversation teacher again in the most wired country in the world. This is what I'll have to contend with. It wasn't bad enough having the language barrier. Now it's a kind of social barrier. Will I have to learn to play League of Legends or Sudden Attack in order to reach my students? Will I have to be a sort of modern day Edward J. Olmos in "Stand and Deliver" and surprise the Korean students with my coolness by saying something to start off class like, "Okay Keemosabes, if you don't study for this test I will kill you faster than a Protoss Carrier can kill a Zergling."? THEN they'd dig me for sure! I might have to stop saying old folk things like "Keemosabe" and "dig" though.

Had a chat with Alex today. He's the young son of my good friends Scott and Minju, who I met while teaching in Korea. Alex was born in the year we taught at Chonnam University together. That was 2003/2004 so I think he's like 11 years old. I've known him his whole life.

That's me, Scott and Alex when he was younger and they still lived in Korea.

Today during our chat he was trying very hard to convince me to download Skype. I don't like Skype. It has frozen my computer twice when I downloaded it and the third time when I downloaded it successfully it just stayed on all the time sucking valuable RAM up. It didn't work worth a shit when I used it and I used it once for a job interview then never used it again. So I nuked it and freed up some space. I didn't want to download it again just to chat with Alex. But he persisted. He practically begged me. He even suggested the gmail phone chat.

So I asked him why he wanted me to get an internet phone program so desperately. He said it was so that he could play a game while chatting. He says, "If we use facebook chat I'll have to pause my game and then I'll get killed 90 million times." No, it was more like, "If chat w u @ FB get killed 90M x! >:-(" Or something like that. I just said I would rather he put his entire concentration on the game then. So he says that he usually doesn't concentrate that hard on the game when he plays it. Not really getting my point. Then he asked a few more times for me to Skype up, and THEN commented on how boring the chat was and hit me with a deluge of Dispicable Me animated Minion emoticons one after another in rapid succession. A couple of other times he commented on how fast he could type hitting
return
after
each
word
he
typed
like
this
. There was even a point or two when he just randomly slammed a bunch of keys and I got messages like "pao8igfh[awegh."

I told him that no matter how annoying he tried to make the facebook chat, I still preferred it to Skype. And it was still a pleasure to talk to him. I love that boy and was very happy that he wanted to talk to me! So anyway, we said goodbye and he said we should chat again later. I said it might be too late for him since he's in Canada and I'm in Korea. He says I shouldn't worry because he'll be up till 2 AM. And up for school the next day! What a little madman!

Does it seem to you like the younger generation are living lives in fast forward? I guess this is nothing new from generation to generation, but I think it's even moreso, no? I find myself falling into the impatience trap once in a while too. My computer doesn't instantaneously get to the website and I curse and sigh and say something a spoiled child might say like, "AAaaawww come ON! This is taking for EVER!" Remember not so long ago when even the best internet slowly built the webpages? We were impatient back then too but we waited. Sometimes I find myself impatiently waiting for my turn in the conversation to speak and realize I haven't paid any attention to what the person speaking to me was saying. And usually it was something important or something that my statement makes obvious that I wasn't listening. "OH YEAH," I say, "And the man in the big, yellow hat!" "Dave, she was just talking about her friend, George who's bi-curious. Weren't you listening?"

Impatience can be death in conversation though too, can't it? This is why it puzzles me how patience is just not something people have the patience for any more. It's go, go , go at most jobs. Even the ones that require communication with other people. I suppose it's more common than ever to communicate the fast way, by text or telephone or Skype so you may not need the same level of patience, but sooner or later people have to talk to people and that can take a lot of patience. I am a slow talker. I like to craft a sentence in my head so that it may not be the most common way to get my point across. That takes time and sometimes hesitation. I find more people nowadays who will just barge right in on me mid sentence pretending like they thought I had finished my sentence when in actuality they just think I'm a drivelling idiot who has run out of batteries and wasn't worth listening to anyway. Needless to say, that bothers me. Most people who do this are young and I've learned that in a lot of cases, I'd say more than half, the reality is they just weren't listening to me. They were impatiently waiting for airtime.

Tolstoy said the two strongest warriors are Time and Patience. By that definition I have gotta conclude that this younger generation is getting weaker. We've heard them called the "Internet Generation." And we've heard the internet called the "social network." But I have to say, as far as social skills go, us old codgers have a lot to teach the young gaffers. Codgers, teach the gaffers patience. Twas always thus and always thus shall be. At least that's what I reckon.

Some blathering...

What the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve.

Napoleon Hill

If you cannot do great things, do small things in a great way.

Napoleon Hill

Great achievement is usually born of great sacrifice, and is never the result of selfishness.

Napoleon Hill

See? See? Now this is what I'm talking about. Or have been blathering on and on and on about for most of my life. What I'm blathering about is the pseudo-positivity that attracts so many people to absolute negativity. Bad stuff. Evil.

I'm not saying I'm normal but when I read the thing about that poor guy who sold his 10% ownership in Apple for 800 bucks I think that is a good deal of money and he's better off ridding himself of any association with the evil empire Apple is. But that's just me... Then I look at that impossible to understand number at the bottom. If 10% of Apple is now worth that much, you multiply that number by 10 and that's what Apple is worth now. That's right, folks, over half a trillion bucks. And as we all know, these big businesses don't disclose the ACTUAL numbers. Apple makes more than we know and probably has trillions in Swiss or Cayman Island accounts not benefitting the country and people who have made the company rich.

Napoleon Hill was a well known how-to-get-rich life coach long before Tony Robbins was born. His book, "Think and Grow Rich," was published in 1937 and is s bestseller still quoted as motivation by corporate scumbags the way the Bible is a bestseller quoted by suicide cult leaders and killers. Cherry-pickers, all of them. Unfortunately for Hill, the reason his book is abused so widely today is because people are applying the very philosophies outlined in it, TO it. It's a self-defeating publication. Let me splain. No, is too much, let me sum up:

Hill preached repitition of thought, a kind of self-hypnosis, believe and achieve so that people would block out the doubt and through mental self-battery create a sort of placebo effect on themselves. The mind is very powerful and it is perhaps most effective on itself. As you can see from the quote about selfishness above, Hill was not all about corporate capitalism and greed. Yet so many "successful" gozillionaires out there have followed his teachings and give credit to them for their success. How can this be? Well let's delve deeper, shall we?

The original idea for his book was suggested by Andrew Carnegie, who was very impressed with the young Napoleon Hill. Carnegie suggested that hill interview a wide variety of "successful" people and try to distill the secrets of their success in a concise, easy to understand book that could be used by others to help them succeed. I put quotes around success because this seems to have been the disconnect between Hill and Carnegie and probably a lot of the Hill followers since. Again I must splain.

We need to know a little about Andrew Carnegie before we can understand what HE meant by success. Andrew Carnegie was a filthy rich steel magnate in the 19th century. He had hundreds of millions when people were still impressed by millionaires. Incredibly rich! And nobody will say he didn't earn his money. He went from rags to riches. The epitome of the American Dream. What did he do with that money? Maybe more to the point, why was he earning that money? What was his motivation? Was it the simple douchebaggery and greed that is the motivation for so many modern businessmen? Nope. Carnegie called it, "The Gospel of Wealth." He used his money, (350 million bucks, about 90% of his fortune), to improve society. That may not sound like a lot to us now in the trillion generation, but in our money that is estimated to be about 4.76 billion. That's a buttload of philanthropy! And that was his goal all along. People mattered to Carnegie. Other people. He was not selfish. He was not just interested in capital, he was interested in society and his community. You see what I did there? Eh? Eh?

Henry Ford believed that mass production, getting richer and richer, and consumerism were the keys to world peace. He also believed that the Jews, (who he called "financiers"), caused both world wars so that they could profit from both sides of them. For this he despised the Jews, yet the Ford Motor Company was instrumental in aircraft production in the U.S. as well as vehicle production in its German factories during WWII. It is said that slave labour was used in the German plants. Adolf Hitler called Ford his "inspiration" and had a life-sized portrait of him next to his desk in Munich. Ford supported Hitler's theories and did his best to spread them throughout America. Ford was awarded the highest military medal a non-German could achieve: the Grand Cross of the German Eagle.

This mutual respect between Hitler and Ford may have lead to his famous quote, "History is bunk." He was against trade unions because they gave people too much power over company owners. He didn't invent the car, he stole the idea. He didn't invent the production line either but was responsible for sentencing millions to this dehumanizing, mind-numbing conveyor belt, production line work. Ford got his start as an engineer in Thomas Edison's Illumination Company.

Thomas Edison as we all know was a prolific inventor with over 1000 patents to his name. What we don't know is how many of those he bought or just stole from other people. He is famous for saying 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration lead to his inventions, but there was a certain percentage of prevarication in there as the far greater inventor, (in my humble estimation), Nikola Tesla could tell you. Edison reportedly offered Tesla 50,000 dollars to improve on his direct current. When Tesla came up with alternating current, which is a definite improvement, and asked for payment, Edison said he was joking and that Tesla just didn't understand American humour. That's about a million dollars today and anyone who knew Edison could tell you he never joked about sums of money like that. In fact he never joked at all. Edison stole Tesla's x-ray invention and spent a lot of time and money misinforming people that alternating current was dangerous.

Harvey S. Firestone, along with Edison and Ford, was a member of the threesome they called "The Millionaires Club." The three would often meet, work, and vacation together. This is a spectacular movie of the three of them pretty much outlining the gist of Napoleon Hill's book. Firestone, as you can tell from the vid., was loaded with energy and a tireless worker. His integrity and fire rubbed off on his co-workers and this kind of modeling was his strategy for success. He once said, "I believe fundamental honesty is the keystone to business." He also believed that keeping his workers well taken care of and happy was instrumental to his and the company's success.

John D. Rockefeller was a man after Carnegie's heart. Though he was an oil man, (Standard Oil), he was renowned for his philanthropy. When he died in 1937 his fortune was worth the equivalent of 336 billion dollars, which was mainly used to fund medical research, education and science.

There are obvious similarities between all these rich, "successful" men, but there are some dissimilarities that are more important. All of their lives were contributing studies to Napoleon Hill's book, but two of the five, it seems to me, are the examples of how modern corporate capitalism has interpreted Hill's writings. The other three, which seem to have been what Hill was trying to write about, are relics from the past. I'm sure there are rich people with integrity but they are the exception to the rule.

If the true meaning of success includes, as it should, personal happiness, which of these men were truly successful. I challenge you to find a picture of Edison in which he doesn't look like the grumpy, old codger that he was. Henry Ford was a man full of hate and if you watch the video closely, which of the three would you guess to be the happier? If you read Napoleon Hill's book carefully, which of the three would you choose as the best example of his success philosophies?

I would suggest to you that no man has ever become happy or successful by getting, only by giving. This is far from an original concept. You will find it said by Buddha, the Dalai Lama, Jesus, probably even Napoleon Hill. It's just ignored. Or is it just something that people have trained themselves to ignore? Like self-hypnotized themselves, a la Napoleon Hill, to ignore? In his book he trains people to use their minds against their minds for good. But bad people use their minds against their minds to block out the good. That's why I believe it is a self-defeating publication. Greed has replaced charity and philanthropy. Greed is selfishness, the stated opponent to great achievement in Hill's book. "NO, don't look at that line. I will believe in my mind that that line doesn't exist. It was never written. It is disappearing now... poof, it's gone."

When are we going to legislate a limit to greed? This was my original thought when looking at Apple's value. How much more money can they make while people are flat broke? Should any company be allowed to hoard half a trillion dollars of worth while the majority of people on the earth are poor or working their asses off just to get by? It seems to me the obvious answer is no. Now let's follow Napoleon Hills advice and batter our minds into believing this and achieving some sort of solution! Like maybe a ceiling on corporate profit at which point they enter the 100% tax bracket. And a complete, and equitable restructuring of taxation and government use of tax money so the massive influx of corporate tax won't just be re-routed straight back to them.

It's a huge mountain to climb, but if we just conceive and believe, we can achieve it. Napoleon Hill says so.

A Little Blue Blogging

The following will include coarse language. If you are highly sensative to that sort of thing, you've been warned.

I see good signs in the world. I think a lot of them are brought on by the once bitten twice shy phenomenon coupled with the extraordinary information repository called the internet. People get lied to, ripped off, cheated and treated like dog poop all the time. Not the hard stuff that's easy to scoop either. I'm talking about dog fed from the table dog poop. I mean the abandoned burrito-eating dog poop. The steaming, smudge the grass, smell it all the way across the yard, pooper scooper staining dog poop. Who likes that? Nobody, that's who! Yet we all have been treated like that directly or indirectly. For a long time. Whether we've noticed or not.

*** At this point I will have to ask anyone in the billionaire class to stop reading my blog because this has never happened to you. But it is high time it did. With any luck it WILL happen soon. But please stop reading now. Adios, Scrotie McGoldbrickers! ***

We've all been told the fairy tales designed to keep us working and consuming while not really getting anywhere. Like wealth will trickle down. Survey said... BZZZT! Fell for that one and don't believe it any more. In fact we the unvarnished have our own saying and at the risk of overscatologizing my blog I shall now type it: "Shit rolls downhill." No money, just shit. And not the hard stuff that's easy to scoop either. The half roll of toilet paper, stain the bowl, courtesy flush, chocolate soft serve type you might have after chicken wings and beer. So it doesn't really "roll" it sort of creeps like a landslide or molten lava. One might even say SHIT trickles down, but not wealth. Certainly not wealth. We've fallen for that placebo before.

Then there are the placating phrases and cliches that have outlived their misdirecting efficacy such as "tax shelter," "government," "bank," "capitalism," and so on. I read recently that we know of 199 B-B-B-Billion dollars of Canadian money being hidden in the Cayman Islands, Switzerland, Barbadoes and places like that with "relaxed" banking regulations. Those places continue to exist BECAUSE OF those regulations! We're not idiots! We know that for all the money we know of there is a lot that we don't as well. These places are the playgrounds of the super rich. They ain't cheap!

Government... Is that even happening any more? Are we being governed or exploited? Most countries nowadays are run exactly like corporations. Bring up the fact that there is at least 199 billion Canadian bucks not bing taxed and how much good the tax on that money could do for Canadians, (if tax money were actually used to help Canadians), and some jagoff will pipe up and say that according to corporate, and much more ambiguously, capitalist definitions, those money hoarding corporations as well as the governments who allow them to stash that filthy lucre away, have a fiduciary responsibility to the shareholders and electorate respectively to do exactly what they are doing. A shark is a shark. Corporations and capitalism are both designed to concentrate all efforts on one thing: money. "Capital" means money, folks. Buddhism is a lifetime devotion to Buddha. Taoism is when you give your life to the pursuit of the "tao" or the "way." So what, then, is capitalism, Grasshopper? "Capitalism is capitalism." "It's just business." Heard the shit outta that... tired of it... how 'bout let's change it? Duh? Hiding money overseas so it won't be taxed is illegal. Bam! New law. Easy peasy lemon squeezy. While we're at it let's patch up all the gaping holes available to the rich in the Canadian tax code and let's make sure what is supposed to be done with tax money IS what is done with tax money.

And where do banks fall into this web of deceit? They're not banks. They're loan sharks. A shark is a shark. Government, banks and corporations are highly glorified gangsters. "You need us to govern you or something bad might happen in your neighbourhood." I can just see Harper confronted about this 199 billion in the voice of Fat Tony from the Simpsons, (and Joey Zasa from the Godfather, Joe Montegna), saying, "Tax shelter? What is tax? What does shelter mean?"

You might ask, "If it's really that simple, how can they get away with it?" Well for years all it took was a reasonable control on radio, newspaper and TV to make sure we were more interested in the Brady Bunch to notice what was going on. Now, with easy access to all kinds of damning information a mouse click away, things had to literally get more complicated. Bury the average citizen in a mountain of paperwork every time he/she has to apply for a job, drive a car, go fishing, buy a house, build a house, improve a house, vote, get a bank account, travel, get married, pay taxes... take a shit!!!! and they are so awfully tired of paperwork, they just won't have the time, energy or inclination to read your 1500 page tax code and find out that taxes are illegally levied; or read any of the giant "omnibus" bills, ( "omnibus" is Latin for thick enough to choke a mule ), and find the sneaky, little addendums or riders or whatever they're called that DE-protect Canadian waters or get us into a 99-year economic enslavement deal with China. Combined with the longer workweeks Canadians need to put in to stay in the black, the gangsters who own us probably thought they were safe for a while longer.

But people are finding out! The internet is power! Gee, wonder why governments are in such an all fired hurry to get control of THAT too! But it ain't gonna happen! This is a spectacular speech given by, gasp, a politician from parliament discussing how transparent the C-51 anti-terrorism, control the people by manufacturing fear bill is. If we don't want to sacrifice our Canada, our birthright, our "home and native land," to the money-grubbing capitalists and make it easier for them to ravage it, we're now "enemies of the state." So what do you do to enemies of the state if you're a dispicable group of gangsters? Well, it's difficult and costly to kill them. Creating wars isn't as easy as it used to be. And in Canada, it's really a tough sell. So you throw money at them. Taxpayer's money cuz you've collected WAAAAAAYYY too much of it! And STILL there are heroic groups of Canadians who are saying, "Nope. Been down this road before. Not happening again. Take your money and shove it up the hole in your soul." I absolutely loved reading THIS story! Those guys, the Lax Kw'alaams aren't too far from Smithers. Homeboys! Woot! Turned down 267,000 bucks apiece to give a big old fuck you to Malaysian energy company Petronas. And the Harper government who were no doubt falling all over themselves to expedite the Petronas blight on our pristine, Northern B.C. wilderness.

It's encouraging to see this stuff! Both in Canada and the U.S. Support for Bernie Sanders is gaining momentum. With any luck he'll be the next POTUS and subject the poor American people to the socialist hell of free education, affordable healthcare, equitable taxation, proper care for elderly, vets and the poor, lowering unemployment by improving infrastructure, maybe 4 years or more of reasonable government. He's got all kinds of obvious ideas. That's why he's probably considered and enemy of the state as well. I'd like to see him get in though. I really would. Maybe if Canada could get someone into government like Bernie Sanders, and if we could unfuck all of what Harper fucked, then do the obvious things that need to be done, I'd return to Canada.

Meanwhile I've been in Korea for a month now. Time sure is flying! And speaking of mountains of paperwork to get anything done, I think the Koreans might be following the experts in Canada in this way. I can't get a phone, my own place, a bank account, and definitely a job without following a lot of torturously unnecessary rules. Mostly involving forms filled out and sent somewhere, (along with payment of course), and a healthy waiting period. I have sent away for my criminal record check and hope to get it late this week or early next week. That would be the two weeks I was promised. It did take 5 days for my fingerprints to arrive at the agency that is doing the CRC so I'll allow for that much more time. When I finally get that document I'll be taken seriously by people advertising teaching jobs over here. HOWEVER, I don't yet know of the procedure I'll have to go through to get the proper work visa to do any work here. Since I'm just visiting Korea it's going to be more complicated. I'll probably have to leave Korea for a day to get a visa. Then if it's a kid's camp it might be a different visa than a one-year contract. When I get a one-year contract I may have to do another visa run to Japan or wherever. I'd go down to the Canadian embassy in Korea to ask them what my options are, but the Canadian embassy in Korea, where they deal with this stuff, has been moved to Manila. I've sent them an email asking about all this but as yet have received no reply. This may be why those advertising teaching jobs here prefer people with visas already. That's right, I may have to get a job to get a job!

But I know I can always work at a hagwon. Trouble is, I'd like to work at a college or university. I've been applying to those jobs but they all start in Sept. I'd like to work at a hagwon or part time gig until September but most of those places want one year contracts or people who already have one year contracts. The camps want people already working here or people who are in other countries. It's easier to do the visas. GGGRRRRRRRR!!!!

So the plan is to get my CRC, scan that bad boy, then submit it to as many jobs as I can including jobs I've already applied to and recruiters, and see what happens. I'm positive I'll get lots of offers to teach triple splits from 5 AM to 10 PM working with kindy and elementary kids for 1.5 million a month 60 hours a week. But I'll try to find something a little bit better than that. I think I'll be able to work at YBM or Pagoda hagwons but they'll want me for the entire year and may not let me break the contract if I get a uni. job in September. I am hoping things will work out soon though because I am sliding deeper and deeper into debt every day here.

I'm having fun here though. My friends have been really great! They're keeping me entertained. I know they'd like to see my freeloading arse get working as much as I would though.

As far as Indonesia goes, I am still a few weeks away from work there. They still want me but since almost anything over here would be preferable in many ways, the second I get a halfway decent job offer I'll forget all about Indonesia and Wall Street. Although, I just might apply to Wall Street here in Korea. That would be hilarious! I'll let you all know when I get the CRC and start doing interviews. Shouldn't be long now...

What the hell, bro?

What the hell, bro? I find myself regurgitating this classic Jack Black cameo line from "Anchorman" a lot these days. Somebody driving sefishly - What the hell, bro? Some agonizingly tedious bureaucratic procedure - What the hell, bro? Continuing to wait for my KITAS to clear - What the hell, bro? Applying for jobs in Korea that are two tiers below the jobs listed on my resume and not even receiving a PFO e-mail - What the hell bro? If you're asking yourself, "PFO? Just dropping that acronym like I'm supposed to know what it means? What the hell, bro?" It means please fuck off. What most prospective employers, at least the good ones, have been saying to me for years now. That is, if they don't just completely ignore me. I much prefer PFO to being ignored. I take the time to restructure my resume for what you ask for in your job ad; I personalize the cover letter citing everything I think you are looking for; I include all appropriate documents; I send a sample lesson of my own making and an outline of an entire curriculum I have designed; I tailor all aspects of my application to your specifications taking several hours of my time and I get nothing. What the hell, bro?

I've been told it's because I am not including a criminal record check that is less than 6 months old in my application packages. This is a new thing here. Time was in Korea when a worker held at least a few of the cards in the deck. No more. Now the ESL institutes here in Korea receive so many applications that employers can look through and see if the applicant has every last piece of documentation and can work instantly before they give him/her any indication at all of their interest. I am told I can procure said criminal record check in two weeks. I'm a mere two weeks away from legal employability in this country. Surely if they look at my qualifications and call me in for an interview, that combined with whatever decision time they require would be more than two weeks so I would be all papered up before such time as they need me to be. Instead the people who check all the application emails are saying, "No recent criminal record check - delete." What the hell, bro?

But I can't pretend things have ever been that easy on the employment front in Korea or anywhere. It's the multi-buffer system every business seems to employ nowadays. Regular Joe Blows are the ones who invariably suffer the consequences of the accidental/on purpose unnecessary inconveniences in the work world. You go to your supervisor with a problem that is empirically wrong and has a no-brainer solution and that supervisor always shrugs his/her shoulders, puts his/her arms out like the sacrificial whipping boy he is and says something placating like, "You are one hundred and one percent right," followed by something corporate like, "... but I haven't been given the power to make this change," or "... this is not within my occupational purview," or "... I wish I could help." Then goes back to other buffering responsibilities. You get really indignant and go to that person's supervisor despite being strictly forbidden from doing so. That person usually isn't as angry at your uppety attitude. I've done this before. The reason being, he/she spent many years as the first buffer before solidifying the job as the second buffer. Her skills are impeccable. "Well I am very glad you came to me with this issue and you can rest assured that the company is very interested in the comfort and happiness of each and every one of our employees. This is an issue that needs to be dealt with and I personally commend your perseverence and sticktoitiveness. The company looks favourably upon self-starters and those with initiative. This will be a benefit to your record. Now, it is against company policy for you to seek an audience with me personally but I will allow it this one time, given the gravity of you circumstances. I will personally see to this matter. Please let my assistant show you out and I hope that we will have no need for future encounters such as this. Thank you for your valued input." Then she does absolutely nothing about it and depends on you being too afraid to confront her again.

But you go one better and talk to HER supervisor. He suggests a beer. You go out and get a little bit drunk with him and he says, "Dog gone it you, my boy, you are on the fast track to success in this here company of ours! It took real balls to come into my office today and that's what we like here at Blahblahblah industries. Balls, my boy and you've got huge ones. I don't want you wasting any more of your time in the lower echelons of Blahblahblah industries when you have skills we can use in the next level." He offers you a raise, a better office and a job shrugging your shoulders and appologizing for your inability to help with anything. And of course no solution to your situation. THIS is what we have to aspire to in the corporate ratrace of today. THIS is what's called moving up in the world. What the hell, bro?

No matter what school I go into here and no matter how high up a person I can gain access to, if I tell them to just look at my qualifications and forget just for a second that I don't have a criminal record check, they'll just give me the "it's against company policy" shrug and bufferage. I can pull out the logic bombs of, "How could a Canadian CRC be of any use since I haven't been there for the past year and HERE is a CRC from the year before that saying my record in Canada is clean?" Or I can dazzle them with something nobody in Korea has taken the time to find out: a name-based CRC, which is cheaper and easier to acquire, is just as good. If it came back negative there are no crimes of any kind attached to my name. Only if it comes back incomplete is there a need to do the time-wasting fingerprint-based CRC to search mostly for crimes committed as a minor, or the ones Korea is concerned with, crimes committed against a minor, for which names are hidden to protect the innocent. I could even tell them that I have an agency guaranteeing me delivery within 14 days and their ad said the starting date isn't for another month or two. I will definitely have the CRC before then. It does me no good to tell anyone in a buffer zone about this flaw in their policy that will cost them a chance to hire a very good teacher. It appears that even the short term, part time jobs want people who are already in possession of a valid visa or at least have all their documentation in order. I will just have to blog about this, and get on with life.

So that's what I'm doing. I'm trying a different route. I've been visiting friends to see if I can't find me an inside man, someone who has some associations with an educational facility or two, someone who knows the spectacular teaching gifts I have to bestow upon a lucky employer and someone who is not just a buffer and will realize that all I'm looking for is a place that will give me some consideration NOW and if they like me they can hire me AFTER I get this cursed CRC. Unfortunately, it's hard to bust into the finely honed university buffering systems like that but I have agents and friends making inquiries as we speak into a job teaching kids. I've taught kids at camps and public schools here and met people in school boards who would be more than happy to employ me longer term if the situation arose. I'm just hoping the situation will arise.

In the mean time I've been enjoying myself doing some of the things I never had the chance to do while I was here. I had a really fun, musical night in I Tae Won with my drummer buddy Dwayne and my other fellow Canadian friend Lance and his band. They rocked the Thunderhorse, which Dwayne owns. I've rocked with the LRD band before but the Thunderhorse was new to me. I went to the National Museum with Mike, Heather and family. I dunno why or how I could have been here 10 years without doing that, but I was. It was pretty cool. I did a trivia night and sports with Amber. That was great! Guns, Ju Ok and I watched our beloved Kia Tigers WIN a dramatic game in the late stages at their new Champions Stadium. Not crazy about the stadium name but loved the game. And yesterday I met Gun's sister and her family and we all went wandering around the green tea fields of Bosung. Then had sam gyup sal, shrimp, sausage and potatoes on the barbecue while listening to music and playing with the kids. I even got to watch the Pac-man/Money fight on Korean TV. They get these fights on regular TV here. Have for a long time. So while people were going to bars or paying 100 bucks on pay per view at home, I watched on TV and paid nothing. And got my money's worth. Almost. What the hell, bro? Those guys didn't even need to shower after that fight! I've seen better hockey fights! Imagine how ripped off people who attended felt! I heard tickets were up to half a million bucks! What a travesty!

All my friends have been extremely hospitable and they have kept me well fed, watered and washed. I hope I can do the same for them someday. But I gotta get me a job first. It seems to be getting harder to do as I get more and more experience. What the hell, bro?

Still no updates on the visa situation in Indonesia. If I dont end up finding work here it will have been a nice, refreshing vacation and I will be energized for another year in Indonesia. If I can find something here in Korea that looks more permanent, then I'll have to decide whether or not to just scrap the whole Indonesian odyssey. But we'll blow up that bridge when we come to it. Further updates as events warrant.