I don't want to be negative. Don't get me wrong. I know how people would sometimes rather be "pozzed" than hear the negative facts. I think my unlikely future employers have been pozzin' me for a couple of months now. Back in late December and early January when I was offering to get the visa issues all taken care of early and warning that I'd already had problems with new rules and it might be wise to take precaution just in case a new rule slows things down, I was told that it isn't good to philosophize about problems we might have in the future. I was given that increasingly dreaded ESL pozzing phrase, "Don't worry."
But here we are in the future and all that positivity, all that not worrying, all that inaction hasn't helped anybody. Who'da thunk it? Since when can't all the problems in the world be solved by remaining positive?
So evidently there are four teachers who should be starting today and aren't. The school has had to call in teachers from the past and do some double shifting with a goal of getting us all at the school and hastily and haphazardly organized three weeks late. Which was exactly what I had hoped to avoid. But I was just being negative. Silly me!
Back when I was still in China I was getting all the paperwork done for the new Z visa so I could work at the new job. The Chinese have a national fetish for paperwork. No, let me amend that, it's a fetish for redundant or completely unnecessary paperwork. The fingerprinting, the criminal record check, the document shuffling, this has already cost me over a thousand bucks. A thousand bucks that could have been spent on the Olympics, or, right now, on surviving until the blasted visa permission letter is processed. I even offered to get housing, banking and moving squared away, but that was better left for the few days before the semester started. What was I thinking?
So instead I have my stuff packed up and stored in my apartment at Taiyuan University of Science and Tech.
And there it remains all vulnerable and useless. I was told I could leave it in my apartment for a month, which is all that was needed IF I had been able to get things done according to the expected schedule. The positive thinking schedule. People sometimes call me negative, but I've learned never to think positive when it comes to this sort of thing. Korea, Indonesia, China, it doesn't matter.
Back when I left China for Korea in late January, my new school had all the documents they needed and they told me it would take them 2-3 weeks to process a visa permission letter that I need to get my Z visa here in Korea at the Chinese embassy. Well, since coming here, I've found that you don't get it at the Chinese embassy, you get it somewhere else. I've sent an email there and have been told there is a Chinese visa application service center just down the hill from where I'm staying. It's in Seoul Station. I walk there in 30-40 mins, give them that letter and BAM, (well not so much BAM, but in 4 days), I have my temporary Z visa that I will need to get my real one back in China.
Well it's already been almost 5 weeks and we're stuck. The first problem originated at the school. I guess they were having trouble with the new visa laws, (or just didn't want to do the processing since it was holiday time, (Chinese New Year)), so they decided that it might be possible to get us all over there in time by getting us F visas, for business, instead of the proper Z visas. Liaoning U. suggested that to Victoria U. and, since it's illegal, they rightfully said no. So we will all have to wait an extra 3 weeks, (and that's probably positively thinking), for our Z visa permission papers.
But I just wouldn't be me if I had the same problems as other people. I INVENT problems when it comes to work visas, immigration, any kind of dealings with the bureaucracy of this racket. It seems that, (brace yourselves for my latest invention), my foreign professional certificate, which expires when my past work visa expires, Feb. 19, needs to be cancelled by my former employer. NO, not TUST, my PREVIOUS employer, where all my stuff is, the one before that, Huasheng, who illegally farmed me out to TUST, illegally changed my contract half way through it and has illegally withheld my last month's pay. THOSE assholes need to cancel my foreign expert certificate that is already expired OR I can't pursue work elsewhere in China. Apparently this is one of the new visa rules, presumably part of the government's anti-corruption campaign. I guess, "The power to screw employees out of pursuing work elsewhere will NEVER be taken advantage of by employers," was the thinking behind this new and improved rule.
So at this moment, I have given contact information to Matthew, the new head teacher at VU or LU, and he has told me basically, "Don't worry." They have people at LU who can call my former employer and be persuasive, and they will get Huasheng to cancel my foreign expert certificate. I like his positivity, but I predict Huasheng will not only NOT cancel, for the reason they gave me and Doris, (their former employee who was also screwed by Huasheng and advocated for me a little bit), "then they would have to pay me the money they are illegally withholding." No, they will most likely demand a contract saying they not only don't have to pay me that, but my new employer, or I, will also have to pay them a whole pile more to get them to cancel the document. An ingenious bite taken out of corruption by the bureaucrats who pushed this new law through!
I have asked Doris to contact the employees who currently work at Huasheng, who are all being screwed by Huasheng and will quit en masse after spring festival, if they could cancel my foreign expert cert., or at least get me a copy of it. I also asked the faithful Faith, who was screwed worse than anyone by Huasheng, if she could do anything. She knows how to cancel these things online and remembers the password to get onto Huasheng's site, but if that password has changed, she won't be able to do anything. I also asked my previous employer, TUST, if they had a copy of my foreign expert cert and was told they never had one. Further proof that the whole time I worked for them was just a joke. An illegal handshake agreement between them and Huasheng.
I have a blank of the document that is necessary and will gladly just fill in the blanks with the appropriate signatures or stamps if I have to. So now it's not just the employer encouraged to break laws by this new visa rule, it's the employee as well. I won't be the first or last.
At any rate, I'm spending instead of earning again, waiting for a job, wasting time and money bunking with my ever-enduring Peet/Spiwaks. They put me up, feed me and beer me on an annual basis when I'm enduring the tribulations caused by the inept, the stupid and the CURSEDLY HYPERPOSITIVE! And, God please bless them, they take very good care of me!
Ribs and potato salad. Prepped by me but provided by the hosts.
And I would be remiss if I didn't give a shout out to my other host and hostess, DB and Amber. They keep me well taken care of, as you can see. (the beer in the middle is mine)
So I don't fear disaster, yet, but it sucks to be here when I could so easily be there! I heard of a Ted Talk, but haven't yet seen it, in which a girl who worked in Asia says that in the west, everything is "hurry up and wait," whereas in the east it's "wait, wait, wait THEN hurry up." I think I concur. Even if there is no way to get Huashyte to cancel my FEC and I have to find other employment, I am here in Korea where I can get an emergency job at a hagwon if I have to. And as for my stuff, I HAVE been told to move it as soon as I can, but if I don't, I doubt anyone will do anything with it. Nobody at TUST had the energy to hire me legally, they probably won't be fucked to move a box full of books.
We shall see how this, my newest dramatic adventure in ESL, plays out.
It's never dull over here.
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