I suppose if I wanted to force myself to be positive... okay, even I laughed at THAT! But I COULD craft a sentence in that oft blogged about precariat way, something like, "At LEAST I don't have any complaints about work!" If you don't know, a precariat is a precarious proletariat. This is not a word I made up although this blog has contained many such words. This is something I heard my hero Noam Chomsky utter. Precarious proletariats are those gutless wonders we have in every profession who are ruining things for everyone. They are so scared of losing their jobs that they will polish mucky-muck knobs to a glistening shine then act like it's what we all should be doing. And I fear they are becoming the majority. As mentioned before, the only two successful ways of maintaining workplace dignity in history have been honest government regulation and honest unionization. Even if you change the word "honest" to the more realistic "proper" in those two phrases, both are either endangered or extinct but I am still trying to make it through life without being a knob-gobbling precariat. It ain't easy.
Also, if you didn't know, I'm unemployed. Exercising whatever the opposite of the behavior of a precariat is, (let's make up a word shall we?) I have left another job as a "procariat," a protesting proletariat. Truth be told, my procariat behavior, though, it should have (if implemented) led to improved workplace harmony and increased profit for all, including the mucky-muck management, shareholders and owners, was not appreciated as such, being in variance with one of the aforementioned mucky-mucks (whose knob I refused to polish) and precipitated my leaving. In fact, left me no choice. If I had my druthers, I'd still be working with Carrot/SKhynix, mainly to avoid the hellish processes I am about to complain of. So to sum up, at LEAST I don't have any complaints about work... because I'm not working. Sometimes I feel so alone in my failure to see any positivity in a statement like that!
But I HAVE REALLY enjoyed my short break since mid December! It's nice not working. Tasting the tiniest bit of true freedom us beasts of burden are allowed by our owners. It HAS been sweet. Vacations and/or brief respites from servitude to the man that we call with socially acceptable shame and disdain "unemployment," really allow one to understand the attractions retirement holds. They also make one starkly aware that not working ain't gettin' one closer TO retirement. So with great reluctance, this Superbowl weekend will mark my departure from sports/movie watching, visiting, sightseeing, travel and leisure, and my return to pre-retirement vocation.
To be more accurate, there has been quite a bit of resume updating, cover letter writing and begging different institutions to allow me the privilege of making lots of money for them and so very little for myself. And sometime next week I have an interview that I am hopeful, WILL lead to my re-entry into the sluggish participation in the proletariat workaday world. But it does not come without the requisite punishment for having left it for a wonderful, little while.
My least favourite thing. You know what it is if you know me at all. The tedious paper pushing, certification, affirmation and participation in what with every jot and tittle re-confirms my voluntary slavery. Stamped this, apostilled that, proof of this, evidence of the other, including and diabolically perhaps ESPECIALLY all the stuff I have done many times before. It's Chinese water torture, soul-sucking, waterboarding, human abuse! I feel like Westley on The Machine.
What's new this year? Well I have already noticed a few things that have been added to the penance of the Canadian proletariat hoping to find work in Korea. I'll start with the D-10 visa. It's not really new, but it's new to me in that I looked into getting one this time around. After my last day of work in mid December, if I IMMEDIATELY applied for the D-10 (looking for work) visa, it would have taken 3 weeks to process. So in the second week of January, if I had absolutely immediately found employment, it would have taken at least 4 weeks to change the D-10 to a new E-2 work visa. So I could have sneaked under the wire if I had found work in no time flat. But, as I have mentioned, I usually don't. It's probably because most ESL employers in Korea are still knocked out by paper. I only have a BA. If I had a masters or doctorate in fish scaling, pie baking, A NY THING, I'd be scooped up in the first wave of hiring. With my experience, I'm sure of it. But I still have just a BA. For this reason, I normally get hired in February.
Being the eternal optimist I am, I chose to hope for an early hire this year. If that had happened before February, which it didn't, I could have simply transferred my E-2 sponsorship from one employer to another. I wouldn't have had to leave Korea or get all the superfluous paperwork done. I also chose this route because of all the things I found out about the vaunted D-10 visa. It's 150 bucks or so for getting it AND changing it to an E-2. That's 300 bucks, which is MUCH cheaper than what I'm doing now. However, you also need to go to your bank in Korea and get an official statement proving you have a balance of about 5 grand. You have to fill out the 34D application, which I'm sure is just another repetition of a thousand other forms I've already filled out a thousand other times. You have to present a "job seeking plan" to an immigration agent, who can require proof of this plan. How do you prove you've been to an interview? Travel receipts? Who keeps them? You can see how it could be dead simple for an immigration officer to make their day more fun adding a few more trials to a foreigner's tribulation. And then my favourite: the "possible supplementary documents." Again, it could be any Herculean task like acquiring sworn statements from interviewers or getting a Korean criminal record check (which IS a thing now). It would probably depend on the kind of day the individual immigration officer was having and I have had bad luck in this regard, so I wasn't about to chance it. I was even told that I would have to go to the nearest immigration to my residence. My residence is something the Korean government doesn't know about. For a long time it's been this way. This was the choice of my employer. So I would face a pretty steep fine applying for a D-10 visa at the proper location. The immigration officer I asked about this couldn't come up with a figure but said it depends on how long ago you moved without telling the government. So all tolled, I'm betting that the D-10 option would have been even MORE expensive for me than what I'm doing now.
What I am doing now actually started last week. I had to leave Korea to convert my E-2 visa (which expired Jan. 31) to a Canadian visitor's visa, which lasts 6 months. This is another new thing. I FEAR new things because I have this phenomenal "gift" of being able to gravitate toward any flaw the novelty of something will create. Another example will follow. As for this example, they used to stamp your passport in Korea. Like every other country. Now they've chosen to just give slips of easily lost paper. As you will note from the following pic, they've done it in the customary inexplicable Korean way. I have often postulated that they believe complication = sophistication. You tell me.
The top two were my two previous visa runs to Japan for my year-long and 6-month E-2 visas. Notice that the dates are completely messed up. The only correct date is the January 31st printed on top of "permitted until." My new stamp says I'm permitted until the day BEFORE my previous visa expired! But according to this site, the Korean immigration department did this on purpose. So under, or ON TOP OF "permitted until," they chose not to put the date you are permitted until. Why the hell would they? Complication for complication's sake. Pretty standard. Now we have to know how long Korea allows people from our country to stay. Probably hoping for overstay fines. Money is always the reason for stupid shit like this isn't it?
But anyway, I'm back in the ROFK baby! Now on a tourist visa and I used my ACTUAL address so it's closer to legal now. And they didn't get their pound of flesh for my move from one unknown address to another. I don't like doing things illegally but in Korea you are so often forced to! Mostly because of corruption leading to inscrutably stupid laws. But that's the same everywhere.
Because I'm now back on the visitor's visa, in order to convert to an E-2 visa, I need to get the usual criminal record check and verified degree. And oh yeah, there's something new, complicated and more expensive added to this process too. A few things actually. Used to be there were a few places that required sealed transcripts from your university. Mokpo University was one place I worked where they required them. So I've done this at least once before. I think twice if I'm not mistaken. The transcripts are sent directly to your employer as further proof of your degree to augment the stamped, apostilled or otherwise exhaustively (and for me superfluously) verified degree. Now EVERYBODY has to include them with the other dox submitted to the Korean embassy in Canada. I've had Korean immigration officers show me their screen and tell me that my degree has been verified in so many ways that it is totally unnecessary to do it in any way again. But the love of complication must not go unrequited.
Here's the fun part: I went to the Lakehead University web page from whence I had previously downloaded their request form for transcripts and it had been completely updated! 2019! Oh excellent! Now transcript requests can be handled online. That ALWAYS makes EVERYTHING easier! heh heh Doesn't it? Here comes example number two. Not only are they triple what they used to cost, but you need to access a section of the website called myInfo. In order to do that, yup, you guessed it, the bane of my existence, you need a username and password. So after navigating my way to the myInfo part of the page, which wasn't easily found, I am told I can recover my username and password easily. Since I haven't ever been given one or chosen one, I, of course, need to register. No registration for myInfo to be found. I spent at least an hour trying to send someone a message or find a good troubleshooting area to no avail. The closest I came was a troubleshooting area where you can put in your student number and your name and they will "retrieve" your login info. I put in my student number and my name. "Invalid name" was what I received. So I tried every spelling of my name and none worked. I managed to send an email to a troubleshooting for alumni email, but who knows if that was a genuine address or not?
Not finished yet. After returning from Japan on January 30th (and receiving my new and confusion-upgraded visa paper) I went to visit friends who live in the airport city of Incheon. Since they have a big police station there, I talked my helpful friend Amber into helping me get fingerprinted. I also sent an email to the document service I have used for both Korean and Chinese visas the past few times I've needed them. I asked for information on everything I needed to send them. I received a prompt reply with a link to their site. I was told that I would find a list of everything I needed. What I wasn't told was that I had to order what I needed AND PAY before I GOT the list. But I had successfully used fingerprints from this very police station with this very document service in the past, why wouldn't I be able to use them again? See how optimistic I am?
We go to the station and get the prints. I remembered getting a signature and a stamp one time so I asked the fingerprint taker if she could stamp the fingerprint form. She said no. She told me they don't have a stamp. I am pretty sure the stamp I received before was from the same police station. But it was a different officer so maybe she doesn't have a stamp and the other guy did. Whatever, it shouldn't be a problem, right? The next day I got home from visiting my friends and did the application on my computer. I couldn't do it conveniently on my phone or at my friends' place. Then, as promised, I received the list. Sure enough, the fingerprints MUST be stamped or they will not be accepted. This is new. AND more complication-efficient. So now I have three sets of fingerprints that I think are useless. I will probably need to go somewhere else to get printed again and I will probably need to pay. It says in the new rules that without a stamp or seal they could be acceptable with a receipt and business card of the police station. Well I received no receipt because the fingerprints were done for free. And I didn't ask for a card of course.
So here I sit waiting for responses from the document service and my university. I can't do anything until I find out what I can do. So another day passes without the ability of getting a visa even if I were to be hired. Why? Because the foreigner punishment Machine is on level 50. I'm sure this won't be the final batch of complications. I still have to get a job offer and move!
But AT LEAST I haven't caught the Corona virus! Oh my God Magnum! Did I really just type that?
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