I have now been in Korea since April 18th. That's pretty much 10 weeks. I can remember John from Wall Street in Indonesia saying to me, "Just go over there for a couple weeks while we get your KITAS settled here and then we'll bring you back. Of course John said he had found me a month of full time work for the month of January. Well that fell through. Then he said I should pay my rent at the kost where I was staying until the end of February and by then he'd have me working part time at one of the Wall Street locations for a week or so while my KITAS was being processed. Well that didn't happen either. But while all of this was happening I was teaching some classes privately and I was losing students because I was telling them that I'd soon be working at Wall Street full time. I kept getting, "Just a couple more weeks," from John and I kept losing students. Then it got to the point I've described in this blog already when my visa had to be renewed for the fifth time. It was a one-year business visa and I had to go to Singapore to renew it every two months. Immigration had already expressed their suspicions that I was working in Indonesia when I had renewed it the fourth time. They were POSITIVE I was working illegally the fifth time. I had to lie my ass off because Wall Street had brought me over to teach under false pretenses. I was not told that I'd be brought over on an illegal visa. I still have the email sent the day before I got on the plane from John saying, "By the way, if Immigration asks, just tell them you are here going to meetings and doing training." That was the first clue I got of these shenanigans. Then I had to stop working at Wall Street cuz the government found out, I found another job in Indo where I was promised a KITAS and never got one, I quit that nightmare job and went freelance, Wall Street patched up its problems with the government and I signed contracts with them again in late December or early January. I signed contracts with Wall Street to do a REAL year with them with the PROPER visa, and I waited. And waited. About 2 months of waiting before I had to renew my business visa for the last time.
But John said, "Don't worry, your KITAS will be ready before your visa runs out." I was renewed for another 2 months. SURELY 4 months would be enough for a visa! So I lived with my friend Mr. Jang, worked a minimal number of private classes illegally because I had no choice, and believed John that Wall Street had things under control. "A couple more weeks." I don't know how many times I heard that from John but one time he said it was when I only had one week left in my visa. So then came the suggestion to go to Korea. I could have gone anywhere but Korea was a short, cheap trip, I had friends there who would let me stay with them, I could look for work there just in case Wall Street was just stringing me along, and I had a couple friends who said they'd lend me some money. Problem was I had to borrow money to GET to Korea. I didn't even have enough for the trip. I asked Wall Street to pony up since they HAD brought me over illegally without my knowledge and it was because of that that I was in this mess. Nothing. They would rather I ended up deported or in Indonesian jail. I had to borrow money from another Korean friend in Indonesia just to buy my ticket. I flew over to Korea and was there 5 days before I heard anything from Wall Street asking if I was, you know, like incarcerated or not.
To review Wall Street hired me knowingly on the wrong visa and kept that information from me until I had invested all my money into the move from Canada over to Indonesia to work for them. It wasn't cheap. They got busted and left me in a position where I had to take whatever job I could get in the one month I had to find one. They offered me a plane ticket back to Canada at THAT time but stiffed me when I had to vacate Indonesia in order to allow visa processing to work for them again. The two months I spent working for Wall Street were great. I didn't mind the work and I had no problem with traffic because I lived right next to Pondok Indah Mall where I worked. The other ten months were spent broke, lying to the government and illegally working with the specters of deprotation and/or jail hanging over my head every day.
Well guess what, my KITAS is ready! And it only took 6 months!!! John has been increasingly apologetic in his emails and, though it hasn't been HIM really lying, cheating and screwing me around, he has done so on behalf of Wall Street, rightfully so. In this latest email he says he's sorry for the ridiculous wait time I have been put through and he knows I've all but lost my faith in Wall Street, but come back and work for us ASAP! In fact he mentions ASAP three times and "quickly" once. Like I'm supposed to drop everything and jump back onto that sinking ship. He says, "I know you'd probably like to give me an earful, but I have been working my ass off trying to get you back over here." I have a feeling his ass is still on.
The offer in Indonesia will not even be the offer I signed up for. I wanted, after my experience with English Today driving all over Jakarta in the world's worst traffic, to not work in Jakarta at all. I was offered a position in Alam Sutera where my friend, Annemarie lives and where I have access to everything without the brutal traffic. I was also told that most teachers there live in an apartment right across the street from Wall Street. No taxi, no traffic. But that's not what I'll get. I will get posted at one of the OTHER Wall Streets and will get a place that won't likely be as close as the place I was in when I worked in Ponkok Indah. So I will have to suffer another year of Jakarta and its traffic. It will only be a couple times a day but still, not the premium offer I signed up for. And only 17 million RP which is about 1700 bucks a month. Before taxes. And Jakarta, as opposed to Alam Sutera, is expensive.
Now compare this to Korea, where I am now. I have had some hard luck here finding my way through the new and improved barriers Korea has thrown up to keep foreign workers unemployed and frustrated. Not to mention my usual impeccable timing, I have arrived at the height of the MERS hysteria here. So let's see I have had one camp cancelled because of MERS. That was 3 weeks with room and board paid and 3 million won. That's 3 thousand bucks. I have had one 18-day camp at Gwangju University and a 5 week teacher training gig given to me and then snatched away by the new and improved bureaucracy here. You see neither place knew of the C-4 visa and how complicated and expensive it is. Both jobs would have been SWEET and both say that I fit perfectly for the positions and that they really wanted to hire me, but here I am. So that's a total of 7,600,000 won. Over 7 thousand bucks down the shitter so far.
But I'm not finished! I was actually offered a job at Pagoda in Seoul as well. I worked for two years at Pagoda back at the beginning of my career. It was a lot of work but I worked with some awesome people so it was pretty good. This time around I got a distinct feeling that Pagoda wouldn't have been much better than Wall Street. They wanted to hire me part time though the hours I'd have been working were certainly not part time. I'd work 4 hours in the early morning and 4 hours at night. I'd be starting at 7AM and off at 9 PM. So that means, (and I did this before), up at 5 or even earlier if there's transit involved, and home at 10 or later depending on transit. That's if I live in I Tae Won, where I would want to live. But because I would have been part time I would not be given the accomodation that full timers get. Not even the key money. This was the deal breaker. The minimum key money would have been 5 thou. That's a kind of downpayment. And THEN I would have paid rent. It's now much more expensive than it used to be in I Tae Won so even though I'd be working long hours I'd be making less, paying more and without key money it wasn't even going to happen. So that was another big pile of money that I had and then it was taken away. I also would have had to get the C-4 visa for that position with my own money. I didn't know it yet but that involved a 3-day stay in Japan. That's not cheap.
So where does that leave me? I have given up on the short-term work here like camps and intensive courses because of the damn C-4 bullshit. So my options are either I take the job in Indonesia and go back to a country I like a lot less to work for a company that I don't trust as far as I can throw it. I am inclined to stay in Korea. But if I do I will need to do one of two things I don't like doing: I will either have to take a job at a private learning institute here ideally teaching adults but I may have to settle for kids, sign a one-year contract and then break that contract in late August when I get an offer from a much better university gig. OR I could find a few under-the-table contracts like I did in Indonesia and freelance illegally until the uni gigs come around. This I don't want to do because I could get booted out of Korea and I don't want to jeopardize my chance at a uni gig. I have some places interested in me and in the ensuing two months while universities are losing hope that doctorate holders who look like Brangolina will accept their positions, I will get more interviews.
GIFLE in Pyeongtaek, where I get a nice apartment on campus, 2.6 mil/mo. (2600 bucks) and it starts in either July or August is interested. I was supposed to hear from them this week but nothing yet. MERS???
Dongshin University in Naju, near Gwangju where I get an apartment, work a dozen hours a week, get over 4 months of paid vacation and make 2.1 mil a month, (2100 bucks), is interested. I can also watch Kia Tiger games! I will hear from them next week. Dongshin actually signed me to a contract in 2010 but I couldn't do it because I didn't have my criminal record check. It came 2 days after the deadline. I got an email from a guy who knows that and he knows me. There's no reason why I wouldn't be signed by them again. Here's the contract:
The Naju City School Board is interested in having me teach in public middle and high schools in Naju, where I am half an hour away from Champions Field and Kia Tiger home games. I don't know the details of the deal yet but it will be the standard free apartment and 2.3 or 2.4 mil a month for 20 hours a week probably.
There are other places that are possibilities as well and new ones popping up every day. Nothing is definite though. Indonesia IS definite. It's the one and ONLY thing Indonesia has going for it.
What do you think I should do? I'm in an apartment in Incheon now staying for free by myself for the next few weeks while Amber and DB are vacationing. I am not in as big a hurry as Wall Street is. I can wait and see what GIFLE and Dongshin say. That's just one more week. And in that week, who knows what OTHER offers may come? I think that's what I'm going to do although John wants me to book a flight to Singapore and meet him there on Canada Day, July 1st. Maybe by Canada Day I'll be legally employed here in Korea.
I think I just might reply to John's email and say that if I don't get free accomodation within walking distance and if I don't get to work in Alam Sutera, no deal. I'd say they owe me at LEAST that much. But what if they agree to that???
With any luck some GIFLE or Dongshin will offer me jobs and I won't have to worry about that. We shall see...
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