Putin is a Giant Douchebag

 Not long ago, Ukraine was the third largest nuclear power in the world. They denuclearized in exchange for promises of protection and safety given in 1994 by the US, UK and Russia on paper with signatures. It's pretty clear that Russia's leader, and obvious war criminal, Vlad Putin broke the assurances made in the "Budapest Memorandum" not just once, but twice. At least! Putin's defense now and after his 2014 invasion of Crimea was the same: He contends that the agreement was signed with a different government in 1994, not with this new, "illegitimate" one. Since the two governments were not the same, some historical clarification is needed.

2014 was a big year for Ukraine! The "Revolution of Dignity," or sometimes called the "Maidan Revolution," took place early in the year. Then president Viktor Yanukovych was violently ousted largely due to his refusal to enter into a European Union-Ukraine Association Agreement even after promising to sign the deal. This agreement was seen by the people as a way to economic, technological, judicial and financial reform in Ukraine and as a step toward membership in the EU establishing closer ties with other member countries within it. So how did Ukraine end up with this guy as their leader? Well to oversimplify, THIS is Victor Yuschenko. He was the Western leaning opposition for Yanukovych. He was poisoned by Putin. Possibly. He didn't die, but his face was permanently disfigured. AND even though he was HUGELY popular and would have decisively won an election without Russian interference, he won only for a short time due to the orange revolution, but ended up losing out to Yanukovych in the long run.

To be a bit more specific (and to tie a couple things together in the history of the region) Yanukovych was pro-Russia. In the 80's he was actually a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, so he was not very liberal and pretty Eurosceptic. One of the first things he did was he agreed with Russia to knock 30% off the price of natural gas in exchange for a 25-year extension of the lease on the Russian naval base in the Black Sea off the coast of Crimea. This was when Medvedev was president and Putin was Prime Minister of Russia in 2010. This was not popular with the people of Ukraine because it was like giving up Crimea, and, sure enough, 4 years later, Putin just moved on in. Yanukovych also adjusted part of the Ukrainian constitution in a familiar despotic way (Xi, Putin for instance) to change limitations on presidential terms, like, you know, by kinda removing them. So it was no surprise that he didn't want to join the EU. This is why Ukraine gave him the boot. 

The Russian Federation- by now this was Putin- did not want progress like this in Ukraine, so he did not recognize the interim government. He considered it an illegal coup and the Russian Military intervened, opposing protests, annexing Crimea, and establishing two "proto-states" the names of which, you will probably recognize, Donetsk and Luhansk. A proto-state is not a real state, but a quasi-state operating in an environment of extreme instability. They have been rebel separatist regions not recognized by the people or government of Ukraine since they were established in 2014. The Russian-backed forces and the Ukrainian people's military have been in constant conflict since. An estimated 14000 people have died due to Putin's military bases inside Ukraine. Regardless, the interim government signed the EU association agreement and Petro Poroshenko became the new elected president of Ukraine in a landslide victory in the 2014 election. The Ukrainian people were not intimidated by Putin's Russian bullying posts in Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk. 

Since then there have been developments in fighting corruption, increasing rule of law, decentralization, basically reformation and civilization of Ukraine. But it has all been slowed by the persistent Russian presence. One of the main reasons is that Ukraine has been forced to spend a great deal of its budget on military due to Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk. Ceasefires and peace treaties have been attempted (Minsk I and Minsk II) but failed. When you factor in the massive loss of status as a transit country for Russian natural gas going to Europe, a loss of more than a billion US dollars a year, not to mention energy problems for Ukraine, Putin has made things tough on Ukraine to say the least. 

Then in 2019, a new leader was elected. One of the first things Volodymyr Zelensky wanted to do was settle things in Donetsk and Luhansk, collectively called the Donbas area. So he proposed the Steinmeier Plan, a peace initiative proposed by the former German President, which offered autonomy to the people of the region in exchange for a ceasefire and withdrawal of all Russian troops and weapons. Russia replied, "Elections and autonomy first, then the rest." Knowing how Russia reneged on their denuclearization support in the Budapest Memorandum, it's easy to see why Zelensky, a former comedian, found this proposal laughable. So the Steinmeier Plan was also scrapped. 

I can't speak from personal experience on this, and I don't want to appear like a Saturday morning European geopolitics quarterback, but this certainly makes ME think Putin doesn't "trust" these areas to remain "pro-Russia" if Russia gets the hell outta there. The quotation marks around "pro-Russia" signify that it's pretty hard to believe those areas are as pro-Russia as their voting might make it appear. Would it be THIS kind of "pro-Russia" pro-Putin support do you think???:

This is no wimp. He's the head of the Russian espionage department trying to sell Putin on one of the Minsk agreements that would give Putin what he CLAIMS to want in the Donbas region, sovereignty and independence, but it would also require military withdrawal, something Putin doesn't want because without the military there, it sure looks like he doubts the strength of the Russian support. This poor dude appears to be fishing around looking to say whatever Putin wants him to say. To be flippant, he looks like a guy trying not to get poisoned. "Speak clearly" meant say what I want you to say and in the end, Putin got his "pro-Russian" statement. I wonder if this has any relation to the "pro-Russian" sentiment in the areas of Ukraine that have been hostilely taken over by Russia. Hmmm...

So what do you do if you can't get Donbas independence from Ukraine without getting your illegally occupying ass out of there? You simply declare it independent on your own and bring MORE troops and weapons into the country under the thin disguise of a "peacekeeping force." A move Donald Trump gushed about while calling his comrade crush a genius. If Trump says it, you can be fairly certain it's the opposite of the truth. In fact, a lot of giant douchebags in positions of political power have started using the "I-know-you-are-but-what-am-I" elementary school tactic and because of the narcissistic detachment from reality that can come with such power, they think they invented it and it's super duper smart! You simply take the worst shit you do and accuse your enemy of it. "Nobody will think I'm doing it if they think I'm angry at the other guy for doing it," is ostensibly the mentality. It's only a little cleverer than "I know you are, but what am I," in that you are first, not second to accuse. Is that genius? Absolutely not, but I worry about the mean intelligence of the people on our planet when I see how well it seems to work. Let's not rehash the hundreds of examples from 45's assault on US national intelligence, let's just listen to Vladimir Putin and what he's saying right now about what he's doing. Here's a good one: He considers the Zelensky government illegitimate as he did the Poroshenko government before it. He actually stated that part of his reason for invasion was to "denazify" Ukraine. Considering Zelensky is a Jew who had part of his family wiped out during the Holocaust, (not to mention 70% of the popular vote and was legitimately elected to his office unlike Vlad the Accuser) this is already a stupid statement. But when you consider the many parallels between what the Nazis did and the global force that Putin seems to think he's the self-appointed leader of...

There are those who believe that EU membership and/or NATO membership would be a solution to the problems in Ukraine, but there are reasons why Ukraine has yet to receive either. It's pretty certain that EU membership would almost instantly lead to mass migration of Ukrainians to other parts of Europe in search of better lives and the other member countries of the EU generally don't want that. As for the membership in NATO, it is pretty much agreed that much greater military support would be necessary for Ukraine, which might lead to large scale clashes with Russia and possibly Russia's allies, which could amount to world war III. 

But let's just concentrate on two members of NATO, shall we? The ones who PROMISED to defend Ukraine in just such an eventuality. What are the US and the UK doing to honour their commitments made to Ukraine in the Budapest Memorandum? Sanctions. Sanctions won't work. Here are several reasons experts agree on that. There are always workarounds when normal trading routes are sanctioned. Past sanctions have a failing record. Past sanctions on RUSSIA have a failing record. It's not going to work, in fact the sanctions may hurt other countries in Europe such as Germany and, of course, Ukraine. 

Now there is talk of PERSONAL sanctions. There are people in Russia, bankers and such who have used their positions of great power to amass tremendous wealth (Putin might be the richest among them, even the richest in the world) and they will be the targets of personal sanctions from the governments of the US, Australia, UK, Canada, other EU countries and maybe others. Really! I'm sure I read something about people amassing too much power and wealth and why it's dangerous. I may have even played a board game. What was that called again? Geez, I seem to forget...

I've talked about Gazprom before. That's just one company Putin is known to own stock in. Being the leader of Russia doesn't come with any obligation to divest yourself of holdings that could create conflicts of interest I suppose. Nobody knows, but it's pretty common sentiment that he is the richest man in Europe. 40 billion is just what we think we know about his fortune. But let's not blame it all on Putin here because if those countries are able to personally sanction him, that means they are doing (and have been for who knows how long) personal business with a guy who they KNOW has monopoly-type money and power. Too much power without doubt. It only takes blatant violations of international law, war crimes, killing of civilians and who the hell knows the complete list of shit Putin has done here, for these countries to consider stopping doing business with him. 

How many times do I need to say it folks? It's always the same! EVERY bit of bad world news seems to boil down to the same few holders of concentrated wealth on the planet. Those who are anti-socially and psychotically driven to believe they NEED more money and more power. There may be one or two cells in Putin's body that legitimately yearn for the Russia of yesteryear and fondly remember when Ukraine was part of it prior to 1991. But if you want to know what is behind this whole mess, just look at the long list of resources in Ukraine. 

Call it personal sanctioning, or call it responsible regulation, the super rich are out of control and we need to do something about it. But governments don't like doing this sort of thing because it's biting the hand that feeds them. 

We have the luxury of praying for Ukraine and gasping at the horrors when we watch them on CNN or Youtube, but we'll be in the same situations if we don't start regulating greed worldwide. Heed the warning of Ukraine and don't wait till it comes to that in other countries around the world. That's something I think we should all add to our prayers. 

Putin is NOT Russia. He's not even a real person. He's a giant douchebag and nobody really likes him. The walls have probably started closing in on him like they did on Stalin. He'll probably be totally paranoid in the end, if he already isn't. That is what too much money and power does to people. Don't be a Putin. Or as someone in this vid calls him, Putler. THESE are the real people of the world. These are the ones who do almost all of the work that makes the ruling class so rich and these are the ones who always suffer when things go bad for the businesses of the rich. Do you think Putin will ever go to prison? I doubt it. Like the banks in 2008 that were "too big to fail," he's "too big to jail." Nobody should be that powerful. Let's act like these people:

One last thing to add: I saw a sign on another video that I liked. It was a woman in Ukraine protesting possibly because she might not see the male members of her family again since they're all fighting in this war. Her sign said, "If Putin stops fighting - no more war. If we stop fighting - no more Ukraine." Nobody should be put in this position. Ah HA! Found it again:

I will forgive her misspelling in the last line but I couldn't sleep if you thought I hadn't noticed it. 

Raise a Little (Constructive) Hell

 There's a lyric from this song that I'll paraphrase, "If you know there's somethin' wrong, why don't you write it?" Of course, it's "right," not "write," but I won't let that dissuade me in any way from posting about something that is SOOO wrong in our world!

Driving home from another great visit with "The Fam," my best buddies over here, Heather, Mike and their kids, Reilly, Roman, Iryna and Kelly, and I was blathering about politics which Mike and I often do when he's driving me home after a visit. I was talking about people in Canada who are legitimately angry, but whose desultory protests tend not to change anything due largely to their misdirection. We were speaking about the trucker convoy in Canada and I said to Mike that people are pissed off because things used to be so much better! Not just before the pandemic, but in the 60's, 70's and 80's. How can we get things back to the way they were then when people who worked their whole lives owned their homes and had enough money to retire. Now, with the exception of the shitty and the lucky, we just work our whole lives. No home, no retirement, we have to work till we drop dead on the job. What the frig happened? We KNOW there's somethin' wrong, but how can we RIGHT it? Mike asked me essentially that and far be it from me to refuse a blog post request! 

What is wrong in Canada and how can we right it? A weighty query to be sure! My immediate answer was that we need to target our protests properly. In order to do this, we need to know our enemies. They are few, but they are powerful. They are the large corporations and the super rich who almost unanimously believe that screwing the public is the best way to squeeze as much money out of us as they can. Well, they're just wrong about that, but we'll come to that later. So how do you target them? It couldn't be simpler, you stop buying their shit. So why, if it's as easy as this, hasn't it happened? Well, it's NOT as easy as this. The concept is, but the details are not. There is a distinct laziness in the equation that is going to be difficult to change. I am not referring to Canadians who want to go to Walmart and do all their shopping in one go, rather than shop around in the markets and small grocery stores to support small business instead. While it would be nice for Canadians to do this, there are too many reasons why they don't, and those reasons are legitimate, and I dare say manufactured by the Walmartians of the world. Let's not blame the victims here. 

The laziness to which I refer is one of littler known existence. Watch this vid. I've posted about Dan Price before in one of my many economically focused posts in which I howl about the mistaken business mythology of our times. It may have sounded naïve to you if you read it at the time, and I expected that. I think I included a story about my Chinese girlfriend in Vancouver who was younger than I was then, yet just laughed at my childish gullibility when I talked about honest business. Folks, tell all the people you know that if they want their businesses to succeed, throw out all the crap that has infiltrated business training in business schools for decades, even centuries, honesty is the key. As I write this, Harvard Business School is using Dan Price as an example of how to succeed HONESTLY in business. YES! It IS possible!

When people picture the perfect businessperson, there are a few adjectives we tend not to conjure up in our mental images. Rarely kind, generous, female, liberal, forward thinking, gregarious, hip, artistic, but also rarely lazy. Even the staunchest of anti-Trumpists, like me, would have to admit that, although it was certainly bank loans and Daddy loans that made him rich, NOT hard work, he wasn't lazy. The rich, crotchety, conservatives sitting in the pillowy, red, cowhide chairs of the highly exclusive country club lounge swapping stock portfolio news with the boys' club while smoking cigars and pipes and sipping sherry get partial erections exaggerating the INGENUITY, RISK and HARD WORK that went into their successes. We, the envious proles, have been socialized effectively into buying this portion of their blustering even if we are beyond doubt that their individual and/or collective words of honour are literally (NOT figuratively) worth their weights in gold. We have also been convinced that it is fiduciary responsibility to the shareholders, not personal choice, that mandates every CEO decision. You know what, I think they are either ignorant, or they're lying. And, given the respect in which I hold the word of the average rich person, knowing generally how they all come by those riches, I believe the majority of them are consciously slinging the endless bullshit, while only a few are just too STUPID to be scatalogically self-aware. However, all of them are too CAUTIOUS and LAZY to do business the right way.

Watch that video again. Go to the 2:13 point in it. Dan Price says that the biggest failure in his project has not been size of business (employees) - that's doubled, or earnings - those have tripled, it has been the changing of business thinking. "The System" values having the highest return with the lowest risk and the lowest amount of work. "The System" is another name for that "something" that we know is wrong in Canada. It is our enemy. And not only are they getting richer and richer while we are going the opposite direction while financing their rocket ship rides to other pecuniary planets, those lazy, chickenshit assholes could get even richer if they'd share just a little bit of the wealth. 

But they KNOW this, most of them. This is why, as Dan Price says, zero big companies are following suit. So what can we, the REAL Canadian citizens do to fight them? Well, we need to raise a little hell, that's what. Not by clogging up freeways with rigs and protesting vaccine mandates. I love the spirit of the "freedom convoy" or whatever you want to call it. That spirit IS raising a little hell. But as I said, it's proper, and if I say so myself, long overdue rage, but it's misdirected. So how can we direct our rage properly? Do what I mentioned before and boycott large corporations who are cautious and lazy. Don't buy the shit they can sell us more cheaply because they outsourced manufacturing to countries with cheap or slave labour like China, rather than pay Canadian people living wages to produce that same shit locally. That would be a start.

What else could we do? Well the convoy drove to Ottawa where the seat of our commonwealth government resides. The words "common" and "wealth" scrunched together like that might give the impression that Canada, being a member of the British Commonwealth, would be interested in having businesses, and business philosophies, like those of Dan Price, thriving in our country making the common people more wealthy. Well, the common people certainly would be interested in that, but more profitable and honest business is clearly not a primary concern of our government and has not been for as long as I can remember. I would say that second only to doing what they're told by their owners and ours - the concentrated private and corporate wealth of our country (and others), the political leaders' primary concern is to manage the risks to their existence. For instance, since I was young and voter turn-out got lower and lower in Canada, the aggressiveness of immigration policies has been directly disproportionate. Don't kid yourself or be kidded, any post-Covid immigration policy the Canadian government institutes claiming it will be for economic recovery or some nice words that sound like it will help US, will be to help THEMSELVES, which is their primary objective after helping the rich. Immigrants vote. And who would be our "leaders" if none of us would vote? 

I feel I need to insert a caveat here before I get to some cringy writing. Canada was better in the 60's 70's and 80's. Everyone knows that. Canada had fewer immigrants then too. Not everybody knows that, but it's true. I need to tell you that I don't blame immigrants for the decline of my country. In fact, I think that complaining about immigrants 

is a way to deflect blame from those very few who are ultimately responsible for that decline. Two party Conservative vs. Liberal is another. Maple Leafs vs. The Canadians, Molson vs. Labatt's, divide and govern has been a tactic our "leaders" have used to their advantage and our detriment. Among others. What I am whinging about is the aggressive immigration used by Canadian governments as a self-preservation tactic. So don't call me racist or prejudiced or anything like that. 

Take a look at the above vid. It's Rush playing at Laura Secord High School back in 1974. That's when I was 7. Go to one of the parts where they show the crowd. What is missing? It hit me like a sledge hammer as I watched. See any black, brown, Asian people in the crowd? Me neither. Snow is not the only reason Canada was called the "Great White North." Last election we are told there was about a 62.5% voter turn-out. I am positive they always add a good 10-20% on that number just to encourage Canadians to vote, but let's say that our politicians have told the truth one time and it's about voter turn-out in the last election. In 2016, the estimated percentage of the total population of people of colour in Canada was 22.3%. This is, of course, documented, legal citizens of Canada. It didn't include illegal immigrants, international students who weren't studying, and probably not even refugees. And there have been 6 years of aggressive immigration since 2016. Go to any major Canadian city and you can tell immediately that the Great White North ain't white any more. Outside the major cities, there is still a majority of white people, so let's hazard a guess that it's about 50-50 right now in Canada. I'm not saying white people don't vote or all immigrants do, (or that all immigrants are not white (give me a break here, I'm not being racist, honest!)) but, I reckon our government was chosen mostly by new Canadians and it could be because veteran Canadians are tired of getting our hopes dashed by whatever party wins, every four years. How long could long-time Canadians put up with that shit? Well, in the "Freedom Convoy," I believe we have our answer. For some.

Now if you've noticed the obvious hole in my assertion here, that only Canadian citizens can vote, you'll pardon my objection to that after finding out first-hand how easy it is for non-citizens to work in Canada without a work permit and how HARD it is for anyone to report them to authorities. I've posted before about how I was called a racist for reporting half of my students in Vancouver who never attended class in breach of their student visas, some who were definitely working in Canada. Also, proof of identity and address is checked at Canadian voting stations. You need a driver's license and a phone bill. NOT a passport or birth certificate. I can imagine the air being sucked out of the room by a collective gasp if a worker at any Canadian voting station asked, or worse demanded proof of Canadian citizenship from a visible minority! Furthermore, there is an active push for non-citizens to be allowed to vote in Canada. Many of the major cities are on board, so it's probably just a matter of time before they legally do what they're probably already doing. 

It's crass and uncomfortable to be talking about Canada like this, and using the word "white" so much, but the point I am getting at is not white supremicist, it is white-longsufferist. During the decline from the glory days in Canada when workers could afford better lives and the government gave at least a little crap about the citizens of Canada, to now when people working full time jobs can't pay the bills and are proven in study after study to be unrepresented by the people they voted for, white people (and it's a bit off topic but Natives too!) have always been there. I am writing this and feeling like a heel for the purpose of defending some, probably not all, but some of the people participating in the Freedom Convoy in Canada. You see, some observant onlookers have noticed a conspicuous absence of colour in the crowds blocking Ottawa streets these days. Origins of the convoy have been traced to white supremacy too. But I have no doubt that a lot of protesters are the people, the white people, who have suffered longest under the oppressive rule of the rich and the impotent governments that ignored our cries against them over the years. They might feel like latching onto this protest is the only thing they can do. 

But is it? Is there anything else that Canadians can do to smarten up our leaders? Is there still a chance of getting Canadian politicians to do what they always say they do, what it is literally their jobs to do, but that which they never seem to do? That is, can we get them to work for us, instead of themselves and the rich? I think we can. You see our government, like so many, is the many being controlled by the few through implicit submission. In Noam Chomsky's book, "The Precipice" he writes that 250 years ago David Hume was shocked by this. Implicit submission is a choice. Yes, it is a choice that is less commonly the choice of the industrious than the idle, but I don't believe Canadians are idle or lazy. I think we are just efficiently distracted from the knowledge that the power remains in the hands of the governed. We're industrious, but kept too busy working our asses off to freedom fight - to name just one distraction.

This is another reason why the rich believe the $70,000 a year jobs that people like Dan Price give their employees can only hurt their businesses. But not only can these money-addled bozos make MORE money if they abandon their "greed-is-good" Gordon Gecko corporate strategies, look what else happened in that small model in Seattle. Employees started having kids. A LOT of them. Why? They could afford to. What are kids to the slimy, amoral captains of industry? Consumers! More consumers = more money. Why wouldn't you WANT that? Because selling more is harder work than selling FOR more. Price gauging is the lazy business person's way to success, while treating people fairly is for chumps. This would also explain your massive inflation. Don't listen to all the so-called experts talking about the central banks setting interest rates or the pandemic or worker shortages or any other things they will blame it on; inflation has had one and only one cause in its long history: the greed and laziness of the rich and powerful business owners. When was the last time you heard of them lowering prices?

So three things we can do to fight the power: 1. Stop having kids until we can afford them. 2. Stop buying from big, bad corporations. Go to Costco, not Walmart. 3. Don't vote (and tell a new Canadian not to vote) for people who won't work for you. I'm not saying forever, calm down. Political parties are very much like businesses. They like to believe they have all the power in our relationship, but their cockiness needs to be checked from time to time. Hit them in the wallets. Consider your vote as what it actually IS - money. If a politician gets no votes, he/she gets no money. They lose their jobs. So their parties will either change the policies of their candidates, or they'll find new candidates. Unfortunately, they STILL don't have to work for us if they can convince us that their candidates are going to work for us, but they are just lying. Even third party candidates might do this. We should know this by now. So we may have to provide our own candidates. Storm the capital. The truckers would give us rides!

One final thing, if you are wondering what kind of policy to look for in a candidate, here's what Canada needs: We need a candidate with the balls to mandate a 5 or 10 year price freeze across the board for every product in the country. Then raises across the board so workers can catch up to the companies. The rich have shown that they will not voluntarily do what Dan Price did, so we'll have to force them to get richer against their wills. Idjits. And, if I may, I'd like to propose a name for the bill. It'd HAVE to be called the "Price is Right" bill, no?  

One of the many reasons things were better in the 50's and 60's in Canada was that the minimum wage pretty much kept up with inflation. Maybe to reward the regular people of the country for, you know, saving our way of life. Fight a world war, suffer through a depression, fight another world war, and THEN you get a little gratitude from government and business. But only two decades worth before they start taking it away. It disappeared slowly, which is why the 70's and 80's were still pretty good. But if minimum wage (in the US) had kept up with inflation, it would be over $20/hr. right now. In Canada it'd be $25 easily! That's MINIMUM wage. Perhaps the only greater political disservice ever perpetrated upon the people of those same countries has been the "temporary" income tax that is still, after over 100 years of temporariness, being collected. The candidate I vote for will get rid of that shit too. We need to demand stuff like this from the people who SAY they represent us. 

If we can't find a candidate who can keep from being assassinated long enough to do these things, we'll have to do them ourselves. So, 4. Demand raises. 5. Don't buy anything if it goes up in price. 6. Stop paying your income tax. Pay your other taxes, but not income tax. They won't throw us all in prison, they need us to do all the work they get all the credit and money for!

At any rate, these are just a few ways we can raise a little hell in our country. Some hell that is MUCH more constructive than the "freedom convoy." 

P.S.:

It's voting time in Korea, or as I like to call it, "erection time." The envelopes in almost every box at my apartment are voter information packets to help people keep track what candidates are hoping Korean voters will believe the candidates will do if they are elected. See the empty mail boxes? Foreigners. 

Master's Debating

 "Like a king without a castle. Like a queen without a throne. I'm an early morning blogger and I must be movin' on." 

Maybe I'm up early THIS time because it has occurred to me, nay, Fate has smashed me over the head with the concept, that maybe now would be a good time to start my master's degree. I can't work anywhere for at least two, probably three months, but the lowest paying uni gig in the country, and they're immutable in their persistence to remain so. I was recently given an ambiguously worded offer to reduce the shady "counseling" part of the job, not get rid of it entirely, but I remain unmoved since they've lied about the counseling before. I told the school that my main concern was making more money, to which they replied, probably dishonestly again, that the budget has been determined and can't be changed. I countered with, "That's fine, then give me the entire semester breaks off so I can do kids camps or some other extra work to augment my (paltry) salary." The eventual reply was "Four months vacation is too much."

My retort was, "Actually it's closer to 5 months and that is standard in college/university contracts around Korea. All I am asking for is a standard contract. I am not a sub-standard teacher and I would like a contract that suits my skills and experience. If you cannot offer me that, please email me my record of employment and letter of reference."

So that's where things are at this time. While in the midst of this negotiation, the time of vacation struck me as familiar. Semester breaks are 9-10 weeks long. What was I just reading about that was 9-weeks long? Oh yes, it was a term of study toward a master's degree in education. If I timed it right, I could teach for a semester, then use the semester break, if I had it off, to complete a term of study toward an M. Ed. Five of those terms of study and I've got the master's so many places in Korea are now requiring. In fact, if I were even in the midst of acquiring said M. Ed., it would certainly increase my marketability over here!

I taught in the regular program at Gongju University just last year. They gave us the entire semester break off and if I had been smart, I might have started my studies then. This year I couldn't teach in the regular program at Gongju University because they changed their policy on qualification and a master's degree is now required. I didn't have any education-specific lobotomy. No skill or experience was lost. I actually, along with thousands of educators worldwide, was forced into a self-taught crash course in remote education. Those skills only strengthened with another year of online teaching this year for lower pay and less vacation time in the international program. That said, I didn't really feel like I had been demoted until I started talking to the latest of the three supervisors I've had in the last 10 months. She was unaware of my years of teaching in Korea including at some more reputable schools than Gongju U., and, like a lot of the supervisors I had had in the past, seemed a bit envious of my schedule that wasn't 9-5 Mon-Fri like hers. Her efforts at trying to fill in my schedule, usually with bogus busy work and meetings about nothing, were transparent. But never more so than when I started negotiating for a higher salary and she said, after a derisive scoff, "You don't work enough already!"   

Another time when I suggested they pay me the same as the teachers in the regular program, the same person, and if I remember correctly, with the same scoff, said, "They probably work more than you." I told her I know exactly how much work they do because I was in the regular program last year. Evidently she didn't even know THAT about me. And to clarify, they don't do more work because they get the full semester break off. 

The point I'm getting at, the point with which the gods seeme to be bashing me over the noggin, is that without doing anything but teaching, I am becoming a second rate teacher in Korea. A few words on university charters mandating master'ses and suddenly:

It's a wonder how some things as artificial as a piece of paper can be so overvalued in a society! I'm not going to say that I won't learn anything during my studies. I'm sure I will learn plenty. And things like curriculum planning, assessment and evaluation, maybe even the history of education might even be things I can use in a future job at a university in Korea, but will any of that be noticed? Will it make me a better teacher, or more valuable teacher over here? I doubt it. But I WILL get more money, I WILL get a shot at more jobs, and I WILL get more respect, speaking of artificial.

At the outset of this post I said, or sang, that I must be movin' on. My landlord has told me that I can't stay in the apartment I'm in now. I have to move before the end of February. He wants a one-year contract or nothing. But I've been thinking... If I took 6 months off from March to August, included in there is the Korean summer when I don't want to be working anyway, got accepted into a master's program and studied my ass off, I could finish TWO terms toward an M. Ed. By September, when next semester starts in Korea, I would be 2/5 more employable. And if I landed a job at one of the universities that require master'si, I'd likely get the full semester breaks off and could get my degree within a couple of years. 

To me, that sounds a whole lot better than slogging through another year at this place where I already KNOW they think of me as a lesser teacher and will surely be treating me as such the entire time.

All I need to do now is talk my landlord into a 6-month lease, or move, figure out my visa situation, get accepted into a master's program and hit the books. I never thought I'd be returning to school. After my BA, I was so exhausted by the whole education thing, I kinda swore it off. But that was 28 years ago. Things have changed. I'm actually a little bit excited about this!

I am not going to get my hopes up yet. Things tend to get sidetracked or sometimes completely blown to smithereens in my life, as the title of this blog would imply, but if they do, you'll hear about it here.

The Economics of Fear

 In his most recent book, "The Precipice," Noam Chomsky refers to the USA as "a society that has long been the safest and most terrified in the world." What are they so a-feared of? With the military they've got, it wouldn't be invasion. It's something far more diabolical. After a great deal of research and, unlike any of us, Noam does research while being one of the smartest dudes in the world, he has concluded that what we, and I include myself as a fellow North American, are afraid of is the rich. The wealthy, the one percent or maybe even the POINT one percent. The only folks who prosper during times of fear because they benefit from our fear, indeed they base their wealth on it!

What am I blathering about? Just a few pages before the above statement in "The Precipice," Chomsky talks about St. Alan. The mere fact that people know the name Alan Greenspan is testament to his danger. If you are from the era when we all watched so much television that commercials were the "memes" of the day, you'd recognize the phrase, "When E. F. Hutton speaks, everyone listens." Greenspan is E. F. Hutton. He is the former chair of the FED and was instrumental in turning boring, safe banking into a sexy, risky industry in which market players were given more powerful instruments (derivatives) with which to make bets on the future... using OUR MONEY! He was worshipped and followed as a god by members of the economic professions and other admirers for decades until the bubble he helped create, largely through the bloated housing "securities" market, burst in 2007/2008. If you watch "Inside Job" and "The Big Short," you will know that this makes him basically... 

This was the "miraculous" economy of the 80's, 90's and 2000's. If you remember back to those years and you take a look at your bank statement, you might think, "Hey, wait a minute... how come I wasn't in on that miraculous economy?" Well, you were in a way if you are the vast majority. That way? You were the earner of the money that was used to create this economic "miracle," but you were in no position to gain, just to lose. You take the risk, the banks and investors make all the dough. It's a shitty deal, right? So why did we all allow it? Two reasons: ignorance and fear.

Before I get ahead of myself and maybe assume too much of my reader, let me give you another name: Lewis Ranieri. The mere fact that people DON'T know his name is testament to his danger. He was the inventor of the mortgage backed bond in the late 70's. He got the idea of "bundling" people's mortgages so that the banks got paid early and investors (huge entities composed of money like investment firms, pension funds, hedge funds etc.) assumed the debt. Banks actually made a 2% profit for selling these bonds. People pay their mortgages so they were considered safe. This is where the awful term "securitization" comes from. 

The original housing bonds probably wouldn't have caused a big problem. It was greed that caused the problem. You see, these mortgage backed bonds sold out. The market was so hot, they needed more. So banks started giving mortgages to everyone. NINJA mortgages for people with no income and no jobs - sure. The subber the prime the better because banks could make higher percentages on them. This is where the money business started making fancy, euphemisms so that they could sound like they were the only ones who understood this crap. This'd be our ignorance. Words and non-words like "derivatives," CDOs and CDS's. A collateralized debt obligation was a derivitive derived from bundles of sub-prime mortgage loans. Basically loans everybody KNOWS will be defaulted on. Absolute crap, BUT they go to Moody's and slap a triple A rating on them (and Moody's played along because if they didn't accept money for their bullshit triple A rating, their competitors would) and - voila - the market stays hot. 

Pretty soon credit default swaps or "shorting" the housing market became popular. They were like insurance taken out on the housing bond market. If 15% or so of the mortgages in a bundle defaulted, the CDS paid out like insurance. So you WANT the house "owners" to default on their mortgages. You pay premiums, like any insurance, every month until the CDS pays off, but when it does, it could be 10-1, even 20-1 payout! Usually banks, after selling the garbage CDO's, convincing investors they were "diverse" and deserving of their triple A ratings, fucking short the shit they've just sold! THIS - THIS is your miracle on Wall Street! How the hell did this happen? Surely America (and all the other central bank driven economies of the world (which is all the big ones)) have protection against such irresponsible bank behavior! Don't they?

Well this is where St. Alan came into play. The Glass Steagall Act was drawn up in response to the collapse of the US banks in 1933 - the Great Depression. It separated commercial banks from capital markets and it is believed by many that the undermining and eventual repeal of its most important provisions figured largely in accelerating the '07/'08 financial meltdown. It actually happened quite late in the game. In 1998, the Fed pressured congress to allow the merger of Travelers - a huge insurance and "securities" conglomerate, and Citicorp - the largest bank in America. Hello? Can you say conflict of interest? This was exactly what Glass Steagall was drawn up to avoid! I don't know if this happened, but hear me out: Citibank could theoretically put together the shittiest piece of crap CDO made up of the most highly suspect home loans given to the most questionable of home "buyers," sell it to ITSELF at a huge percentage, take out a CDS on it, wait five minutes for it to default, then PAY ITSELF. Now I KNOW this sounds confusing because how could a bank profit by paying itself from its own money. Ahhhh, this is where another of their fake words comes in: leverage. Leverage is what the financial racket calls the practice of creating fake money out of thin air. Basically taking loans out on their loans. 

Okay, if I were to go to a bank and apply for a loan today, they'd ask for collateral. A loan of 8000 bucks might require me to put up something of value, like my home, worth 10,000 or so. I live in a tent. A really, really NICE tent. Anyway, this is negative leverage and I am stuck with it because the banks set the assets to equity rates. So of course if they are taking loans from themselves they are going to give themselves an awesome rate of assets to equity. It was up to 12-1 in 2004. That means the bank could take a loan of (or buy a CDO worth) 96,000 bucks and only need the same 8000 bucks of backing. That's 88,000 dollars of fake money. And, of course, banks don't deal in the paltry sums we do, we are talking millions, billions and even trillions of "leverage" or money bankers just pulled out of their unregulated asses by the time 2008 rolled around and leverage rates were 33-1. Before that time only governments had such freedom to "print their own money."

How did they get away with this? Years and years of pressure put on law makers to adjust laws and allow for irresponsible gambling in the financial market, and lobbyists paid by that industry to pressure government to deregulate - that is, to defund regulators like the Security and Exchange Commission. The SEC had ONE employee at the height of the crisis. Banks and financial firms were free to do whatever they wanted and it was largely because of Greenspan. The regulation of the financial markets was left to the financial markets themselves with a parental warning from governments and legislators to please try to exercise self-restraint. 

You might, like any person with an ounce of human compassion, wonder how this whole industry could just cheat so many home owners and mortgage payers. Well, it's worse than you think. They cheated every tax payer, and when I say that I want you to know that beyond a certain income, nobody pays taxes. It's just the poor dumbasses. The whole time this bubble was being blown up, the faces of the tranche traders, CDO floggers and the absolute worst, the guy who made Mark Baum (Steve Carrel's character in The Big Short) seek redemption from the craps tables, the SYNTHETIC CDO hawkers remained smug. This was because they KNEW the banks were too big to fail and would eventually be bailed out by the stupid, but hardworking tax payers of America. I remember at the time thinking 700 billion was an inestimable amount of money, but since 2008, out of the public eye, that total has ballooned. Here's a paper by some grad students from the University of Missouri who calculate that it has reached beyond 29,000,000,000,000 - that's 29 trillion dollars. 

So, at long last, what did Alan Greenspan say the glory days of his success in economic management was based on? Substantially "growing worker insecurity." Fear. Intimidated working people not asking for higher wages, benefits or security. Workers accepting stagnating wages in exchange for desperately maintaining employment. You'd better believe this fear is something that a lot of effort and planning has been put into! And now that I'm essentially out of a job, I'm starting to understand it better. 

I've noticed, and blogged extensively about how the employment process here in Asia has been artificially complicated and the frustration at the endless tedium of job application that makes a worker suffer the slings and arrows of their outrageous misfortune to have shitty jobs. But we bear those ills rather than fly to others we know not of. What are the ills we know not of that make us bear slings and arrows like desk warming and bogus counseling and working for free during vacations and bullshit meetings being called to fill holes in your schedule and 150-page website editing duties that are also unpaid... I could go on, couldn't I? You know if you've read my blog. I knew when I signed on at my current job, which I still have till the end of Feb., that it was the worst offer I'd ever seen for a post-secondary institution in Korea. I took it because I was afraid of being unemployed during Covid. 

Now for the first time in many years, I've been applying for jobs back in North America. What a travesty that has become! I've howled before about Korean recruiters insinuating themselves into a perfectly functional job market that used to exist here whereby schools advertised on sites like Dave's ESL Cafe and teachers applied directly to somebody who worked for the school to which they were applying. Now a lot of the jobs are sold to recruiters. Something similar seems to have happened back at home.

Indeed, Linkedin, Workopolis, Wowjobs, Jooble, Glassdoor are some examples of job websites to whom a lot of schools seem to be selling their application processes. And you can't use them until you register and they don't tell you that you need to register until after you've spent an hour or so filling in all the blanks you can. And THEN sometimes you are told your application is incomplete and you need to fill in all the necessary blanks marked with red exes, but you have exactly zero blanks on your entire application marked with red exes. I usually try to avoid these jobs because often they are old jobs that are already filled. They don't care about hiring you, they just want your information to sell. The sites often reset or time out too so an hour-long application turns into a three-hour battle with technology and in the end when you press "submit" or "apply" or whatever, a wave of fear rushes over you in expectation of some sort of glitch, which so often is the case. And there are sometimes some really good looking jobs on these sites, so I have to brave them and face my fear occasionallly.

Then sometimes you manage to find an email that actually IS associated with a real educational institution to which you want to apply. Often they lead to their OWN automated application sites that are almost identical in design, length, frustration and glitches as the work websites. I've applied to teach at Vancouver Community College, a place where I studied for my Provincial Instructor's Diploma many years ago. I made a special resume and cover letter for them, answered all their questions, uploaded documents like reference letters, transcripts, teaching philosophy and such, only to reach the end and find the message that my application was not submitted because I need to fill in all the required blanks that are marked with red exes... and both times, there were no red exes. 

There are some disturbing psych tests that are part of these online applications too. Much like the places in Korea that require entire curriculums, I'm just not comfortable giving total strangers that much of my private information. I don't know why it is, or at least used to be illegal to ask a person's age, religion, or race, but now they ask deeper, more meaningful questions with impunity. "I'm a person who enjoys seeing others succeed." 1-5 5 being very much like me and 1 being not like me. What if you are super competitive and hate seeing others succeed? Is that going to set off flags? Or maybe NOT being super competitive will set off the flags the job market being dog-eat-dog as it is. How about we at least have a Zoom meeting before delving so deeply into my soul? I reckon if you want to ask questions about my inner demons, you'd better ask me out on a date first. Right? At least wait till the interview. But apparently not. Maybe I'm out of touch. Maybe people are walking down the streets of Toronto or New York these days asking random strangers, "Hey, man. What do you feel are your strengths and weaknesses in a teamwork situation?"

Then even if you DO manage to submit a few applications, you start wondering why nobody's calling. You start questioning yourself. Am I too old? Am I not good enough? And even if you get an interview, you still might not get chosen and you have the same crushing feelings of inadequacy. And even if you nail the interview, land the job and accept, you have to move, start a new job, meet new co-workers and friends and work for an employer that may be just as bad or worse than your previous one. New bad stuff, new good stuff, but all stressful stuff. 

Are you starting to sense the fear? And this is just to add to the regular fears that go along with not being employed. Will I need to move? How long will it take to get back to work? How much will my doctor or dentist appointment cost without my insurance? How long will my savings hold out? Will people think I'm a lazy bum? How can I make car /house payments? What if I have to get social assistance? What if I have to move back in with my parents? Will my friends/family think less of me? Will I ever get laid again? Over here in Korea there are other worries like will my bank account or phone get cancelled? How can I find an apartment without a work contract? How long can I stay on a visitor's visa? Does it automatically convert when my work visa expires? Will they take my alien card? What things can and can't I do without my alien card? Life is just a giant pile of stress when you are out of work. If I had a wife and kids, the list would be a lot longer too! Does anyone think the social, legal and cultural jobless stigma has been so fully developed by accident? Is it any wonder that so many of us keep jobs we hate, work for and with people we hate and live in places we hate for so long? I certainly don't think all of this is random happenstance. 

Even though we are regarded by the economic elite as dog shit on their shoes, they need us. If we ever had a perfect example, it was the 2008 "financial crisis." It wasn't that so much as retributive justice. Or WOULD have been if the guilty parties had to pay for the damage they caused, or, I dunno, maybe go to prison? But they didn't. We did. And still are. And we're doing so by clocking in every day working our asses off so those people who hate us can have almost all of the wealth, security and power.

That's why they've set things up so it's terrifying to be out of work. 

But it looks as though I'll be fearful for the next few months anyway. I can't get any job earlier than April but the one I have now. I mean if Gongju Dae re-hires me, they're the only place I can work for in March. Anywhere else I'd have to start an entirely new immigration process, which requires a new criminal record check and all that paperwork. I contacted the place where I have gotten my previous CRC's and they told me Covid has affected the process differently in Canada and Korea. In Canada the process the government is responsible for regarding criminal record checks has been slowed to a crawl and is backlogged. The fastest they'll get their end done will be a month and a half. That's the fastest. Then I have to get it apostilled at the Korean consulate. They'll take their usual 3-4 days, but they've jacked up their prices due to Covid. 

I'll have to move because my housing contract expires at the end of Feb. My landlord won't sign a new one for less than a year. It will be very difficult to find an apartment if I don't have a job contract here. And even MORE difficult for less than a year. But I've been offered a place to stay and even store my stuff by good old Heather and Mike. Can you imagine the fear I'd be experiencing right now if I didn't have them? Or if I didn't have them and didn't have any savings? I'd probably BEG to have my job back with twice the foreign fuckery and at half the pay! It's all by design.

That's how they getcha!

The Hue of My View

 It's February and I am officially on holidays! Yay! I don't have to go into work today (Feb. 1). My current state of being includes a complete absence of work, which is the best part about holidays, but as I've gotten older, I've developed this ability to not so much concentrate on the negative as obsess about it a little bit, colouring my viewpoint on things a tad darkish at times. My viewpoint is sometimes more of a hue than a colour I suppose but I maintain that it makes me more authentic, if not more agreeable. 

I could be happier to be on vacation right now, but please allow some avuncular curmudgeoning, my dear reader. I try to edify even with my bellyaching in a drunken uncle sort of way. I am technically still employed and will get more pay from my employer even though I have probably done my last (erg?) of work for them. So I know I'll likely have to update my CV and send out tens of application packages which no longer merely consist of resume and cover letter, (OH NO!) but must include any or all of the following: pertinent information at the very least in triplicate; all certificates and diplomas probably stamped, sealed or apostilled by a stranger of some office who we pay to do so; a current photograph I currently don't have and won't until I can somehow become or appear younger; original records of employment which, are harder to get from my past employers than original records of the Beatles; online applications from the websites of the specific institute to whom I am applying, which will be chock full of skill-testing electronic, technical and cyber gymnastics to be sure; a criminal record check from my home country proving that I haven't committed a magical stealth crime in Canada to which the office requiring the CRC has documented evidence I have not returned since they superfluously required the same document of me exactly one year ago (point of fact: I have a passport that was issued in China in Feb of 2017 and has not a single stamp from Canada, confirming my absence from the country, or any crime scene therein, for five years, every year of which I have been forced to procure and pay dearly for criminal record checks, which ultimately verify (again and again and again and again and fucking AGAIN) that I have not committed a crime in a country where I haven't been); about half a dozen or more passport-sized photos that need to be attached to immigration documents, application documents, emails of CV's, diplomas, records of employment, and, (why the hell not?) the current photograph; letters of recommendation from past employers who I no longer work for, and for good reason, who would probably lie if contacted and say the opposite of what they (truthfully, though begrudgingly) wrote in said letters; a written statement of my teaching philosophy over which I laboured, sweat and finally shed a tear when I had captured the sentiment in a veritable single-page bouquet of well-chosen words that nobody will skim over, much less read; a sample 16-week, full semester curriculum that I give permission for any prospective employer to (treat me like they've hired me and) steal from me to use for their personal gain in case they decide against hiring me for any reason; a scan of my passport photo page; a scan of my alien registration card, which also has a photo; and the requisite resume and cover letter accompanied by a photo so they have more headshots than their last game of Counter-Strike Global Offensive. But, this may not be such a bad thing because if I go to an interview in this appearance obsessed culture, I may be chosen for the job because some old and senior member of the university board of governors who didn't look at any of my credentials, papers or experience and might not have even been able to understand my answers at the interview, liked my face. Though it's hardly recent, I think I had this taken for a job I did in Indonesia and I KNOW I haven't worn a tie in over two years, this is literally my money shot:

I am not exaggerating. I've actually been told more than once that I have received work here in Korea because I "look like a teacher," or "have a good face." So why the other crap? Well, I think it's simple. Even if we aren't progressing or moving forward, indeed, in some areas, like education, even when we're going backwards, we love to fake like we're advancing. We put a lot of effort into that falsehood too, don't we? If you remember a recent post in which I bought some "premium" pasta, I've noticed this in the area of food so much! And I'm not the only one. I have recently discovered a comedian named Robert Mac that I think will be huge soon. I'd like to post one of many parts of his act here that I think is absolutely brilliant. He's talking about burritos. 

"Now there are all these artisanal places like L.L. Bean Burrito Company and you have to get the Portobello burrito, which are these condescending mushrooms that are marinated in white wine and then reduced with black beans and goat cheese and fresh cilantro and then they're pureed and put into a pastry bag and squirted into this organic, hand-tossed holy tortilla, topped with a sundried tomato, white wine butter sauce on the side and mixed baby green salad, roasted pine nuts and a red pepper vinegarette and a blue corn polenta with a tequila lime chutney and sprinkled with amaranth and quinoa... just the way the Incas had their burritos." 

Ha ha ha. "Condescending mushrooms." Portobello mushrooms are like "apostilled" documents. I think I wrote a whole blog post on THAT choreographed dance of societal hypocrisy before. I think I called it "Apostille Apostate." You KNOW I've talked about banking, government, politics, and other more personal societal mores that we all seem to obey with full (or at least partial) knowledge of their stupidity and sometimes pure corruption. When was the last day, I mean an entire day, when you didn't do anything fake? You didn't lie, white or black, you didn't smile at someone would rather hit with a Counter-Strike Global Offensive headshot, you didn't act or behave "professionally," you gave your unabashed opinion and spoke with complete honesty to everyone you talked with... when was the last time? I consider myself to be exceptionally honest because I'm in a social position more conducive to it than most, and I can't remember a day like this. If I ever had one, it was probably in early childhood before I understood the communal contract of fraud we are kind of forcefully pressured into volunteering for. 

This is probably one of the biggest reasons I detest looking for work. It's probably why, until just recently, I was seriously entertaining signing on for another year of working the lowest paying job in Korea. I don't think I would have accepted the same contract, but after writing the above and giving it some thought, I have to tell you that although I've already said I've probably done my last erg of work for the people who hoard a perfidiously large portion, let's call it the lyin' share of the income generated by my many ergs of work, I could still be persuaded to sign on for another year. I've said it before, but I truly believe that this is one of the reasons why ESL teaching jobs in Korea have become so labour-intensive, expensive and tedious to apply for. It's time-consuming, unnecessary and fake, but it softens you up for the time-consuming, unnecessary and fake shit you will undoubtedly be charged with excreting as a regular part of your job, should you manage to take a convincingly time-consuming, unnecessary and fake dump for the hiring committee to see during your interview. 

Well now my viewpoint hue is darkening somewhat. Don't get me wrong, I like teaching. I have only taught adults here and I like that better than teaching kids. I may be overstating the case just a scosche when I compare what I do with laying an evenly browned, soft-serve ice cream consistent triple coiler for my students every class I teach. The shit metaphor was brought on by the part of the job I hate: every other part of the job. It starts with the prostrate supplicance to the employers in an employers' market who already have me by the balls and THEN learn that I don't have a masters degree to add to my arsenal in this engagement of affectation we all euphemistically call the job interview. They know the masters degree doesn't get them a better teacher. In fact they might be looking for an applicant without one in order to pay that teacher less and/or treat him/her worse. I try to sell them on my experience being more important than a masters degree, but they cleverly parry that thrust with questions of why I haven't lasted longer than three years with any of my previous employers. 

What do I do here? I COULD tell the truth and send this interview into never-before-seen honesty by saying that they should all be well aware of the corruption inherent in the Korean education system and, hence, the many legitimate reasons for an honest person to quit a job. I could even state that staying more than a few years at one gig here in Korea would imply or possibly even prove my collaboration in that corruption. I could further dig my grave by honestly stating my pride in my record of jumping from job to job in the ESL institutions around Korea. They could virtually end the interview by lobbing the nuclear grenade, "Sorry, we are looking for a long-term employee. Thank you for blah blah blah." So I can't do that.

Instead I cite a few reasons why I have left jobs that probably won't be believed such as being at an institution where they have changed the policy to having only teachers with masters degrees (3 times! Cheonan Gongju Dae, HUFS, both after a year of work and Han Gyeong University just days before they hired me (I had even been written into the schedule there!)); working for people who were psychologically imbalanced and on medication for it; having the institution go out of business because a primary investor was thrown in Chinese prison for business fraud; my employer was not paying me, or any of my fellow teachers for all of the overtime we worked and doubled the work while offering no extra pay and no notice mid-contract (which is illegal); my employer requested, then demanded I commit academic fraud (a few places); the government investigated the business where I was employed and charged them with fraudulently acquiring improper visas for their teachers (not in Korea but I have brought this up to stress the bad luck I've had); or even just being offered a better job, or so I thought. As I'm saying all this, I see my value diminishing and the confidence of my enemy, the hirers, increasing. So I usually have to concede this point and move on with the battle, I mean the interview.

The interview usually has questions I have prepared for, but now more than ever before it includes a sample lesson. Well here again it's just complete play acting. They give you 10-15 minutes to act like you are teaching. You have never taught a 10-15 minute class so it's already a joke. They aren't real students, and you don't know their level. You would usually have sent the lesson ahead of time or done some "classroom flipping" if you'll pardon the Portobello term, to prep them for the lesson. What do you do? Tell the interviewers what normally would have happened before the lesson? What I do is I choose a first lesson that I do quite often. It's a little paper I hand out to each student and they fill out a few pieces of introductory information on it, then basically I show them how to introduce each other and make small talk. I tell them how boring the answers they all know are. "I am fine thank you and you," is written on the board and mocked. I give them many options. Then I write a few things on the board that clarify grammar and then I schmooze them all by introducing myself, even shaking hands with them, before letting them loose on each other for a few minutes. Then I end the lesson telling them how nice it was to meet them all. I tell them next class we will start by answering a few questions about people in the class like who has two kids, or who is from Busan? That's it. It has worked for me. TWICE! But possibly it was just my teacher face. I never can tell.

Congratulations, it says in your email, you have been chosen to work at such and such university. They wouldn't be so congratulatory if they know what you are in for in the next week or two. Almost every job I've been offered has been toward the end of the hiring season so I've never had even a month to prepare for a new job. What a luxury that must be! I have always had to hustle over to immigration with all of the papers that are necessary. They WILL make you come back with something else completely unnecessary. That's their job. Like maybe a health check, but not just any health check, a health check done by an approved hospital somewhere in Korea where you aren't. And they won't tell you this or give you a list (which they have) of hospitals that are acceptable, in hopes that you go to one of the UNapproved hospitals where you ARE, thereby forfeiting money, energy and the very valuable time that is wasting away before the start of the semester. I'm not saying health checks are unnecessary, but I had to get one last year, and if I'm employed again THIS year, will probably have to get another one. They know I haven't been outside Korea for two years. They have on their immigration computer screens, or just a phone call away, every medical thing you've done in Korea. Those records are no secret. I know this from experience although there may be laws that, hah, say otherwise. Laws are suggestions sometimes. 

I've been sent away to get a plane ticket I didn't need, utility bills to prove residence in Korea, proposed work schedule at my new job, I could get into another lengthy semicolon list here, but suffice to say, they will INVENT ways to make sure you don't just have ONE visit to immigration. That makes for the most dreaded part of being in Korea for me because the people who work most with foreigners in Korea, immigration workers, are the people who hate foreigners most in Korea. This is not just my very well informed opinion, it comes straight from the mouths of not one but TWO of my former students who actually worked for the Seoul immigration office for a while. And Seoul has one of the GOOD ones! This is also how I know that they send you out of the office to get information that they already have. One of them flipped the screen around and showed me that my degree had been verified several times (many more times at my expense since) and didn't need to be verified again, but she said I'd have to do it one more time. She was right. 

Congratulations! You have completed the stressful immigration process. Now, if you are not returning to the same job or if you are not working on an F1 visa, you need to go on a visa run. SHIT! You've forgotten again to establish at interview time how much, if any, of the visa run expenses your new employer will take care of. Because you forgot, or maybe even if you had remembered, that would be zero. YOU are 100% responsible for the cost of the trip and the visa. Back in the day there was NO place who wouldn't at least chip in, but this is yet another way the "nice" teachers are being spanked by Korean employers. So you try to find the cheapest country to go to that has a Korean embassy or consulate where you can get the proper papers/passport stamps. Japan has been my choice for most of my visa runs. Fukuoka is fast but not cheap. I go there because I can now find my way to the embassy, (and now to many pretty cool sites to see within walking distance) almost completely from memory. I also know a couple of reasonable places to stay and websites where I can reserve them. 

But if you are in the beginning of an international pandemic and you need to go on a visa run... That was me last year. Japan was out. I had to go to Guam. Even MORE expensive and I almost didn't make it out of there! That was a sphincter tightening ordeal you can read about on this blog. So I'm NOT sure of this, but I think the visa runs are most likely the reasons I have had to do all those medical checks. If I had stayed in the clean country of Korea, I wouldn't have had to be tested for STD's (which is in actuality what these tests are for). BUT, I went to Guam. That's essentially the US. Okay, "medical check." But anyway...

You made it back from your visa run. Now you need to move. You need to find a place near the university/college/hagwon where you'll be working because the trend is toward "needing" the teacher at the institution more and more. As blogged about recently, the apartment shysters who own places close to universities/colleges etc., they know the contracts of the teachers and they know the pay and the housing allowances they are receiving. So they set their prices accordingly higher. Even though their apartments are worth what are usually offered as housing allowances. And let's not forget, let's NOT fucking forget, you are either already late for the start of semester or you are severely pressed for time. So you take whatever you can get. The students have already filled up the good stuff anyway.   

Now you need to find a mover. Plug for the movers of Korea here! I have either had very good luck with movers or this is, as yet, a less corrupted industry here because it's cheap and efficient. I would like to see some of the movers I've had in Korea take over the positions of importance in the universities. THEN we'd have something! You get the odd badly carried article or something overtaped, but even in my darkening hue of negativity I have to say, the movers of Korea are awesome!

Now you're in a new city, you have to find new places to shop for everything, new friends, new watering holes, restaurants, hiking trails, to avoid yet another semicolon list, you begin to wonder if you've made the right choice. I guess it IS an adventure if you've maintained the positivity to look at it like that, but it would have saved SO much money, time and stress to just stick with the job you had! And this, at long last, is why you have to be Fakey McFakeface when you're dealing with people at your workplace who are so OBVIOUSLY trying to make things worse for you. It's just such a feeling of dread to go through this all again! If you're LUCKY!

I've been told to my face by my current supervisor that I don't work enough for what I make. I've had this before. Office girls who are just busting into the work world who don't realize that their main purpose as supervisors of the foreign teachers is to be deflectors or "buffers" as I call them. We don't know who to go to with our problems or suggestions other than them, and they are too young, inexperienced and/or stupid to do anything for us. This way we don't bother the higher ups or hold them accountable. Theoretically. For me, after getting rid of the ridiculous amount of mandatory office hours - because it was absolutely the right thing to do, I guess it was decided that I needed a buffer. Usually they work 40 or more hours a week and are jealous of the teachers' comparatively light work schedules. Knowing little to nothing about what the teachers do, at work and at home, and what they have done in their 20+ years of ESL teaching, not to mention all of the above AND being so far from home, they reckon we shouldn't be paid much more than they are. But usually they don't tell us this...

I am about a thousand percent sure I will have a highly bloggable experience of foreign fuckery if I sign on for another year here at my current position, but even knowing that, I feel sometimes like I could suck it up, put on my phony grateful face like I did last year when I took this job just to get through the pandemic, and make things easier for myself in many ways. Staying put is easier in every way other than possibly the job. And who knows? Maybe any job I take at this point could be worse than I expect and even worse than the job I have now.

It sounds like I'm trying to convince myself to stay here. I'm not. I've decided that I won't stay if they don't improve this position considerably. And I don't think they will. The question now is what kind of fakery will I need to employ to land an alternate job? Or will I be able to do it at all?

I have about a month to find out.

But, yaaay. I'm on holidays this month. Now can you see the hue of my view?