Screen Door on a Submarine

You want a quick example of market manipulation and how much control big companies have over us, the people they own? Here you go:

Lime Gillette shaving cream.

There are some things about the world we don't need proof of, we just know. I know from the beauty and the insanely irreducible complexity of the world and all that's in it that there must have been a creator. I know that even though we can't sense it or quantify it, love is a powerful force. And I know that in the history of male hygiene, never has a man said, "I think I want my face to smell like lime."

But try to find a man who's never bought one of these lime muddafuckas. I bet a lot of the women of the world have had limey legs at one time or another. Or wherever they shave... I have a can of this stuff right now that's about half finished. It's been around forever. Not just MY can, but lemon-lime Foamy. MY can has only been around for a few months. But speaking of that, here's another question: Have you ever FINISHED one of these? It's not easy. Sometimes we keep one long enough to get a round rust stain on the bathroom sink where it sits, but usually we keep it just until we get some shaving cream that smells like something we want our faces to smell like. Then we chuck it. Or we might keep it around rusting till our other can runs out. It's interim shaving cream at best.

I think I've bought more of the small cans for travel than the large ones. Come to think of it, in all the countries I've been to, there it was! Because it was the only kind available at the airport I probably paid more than the big can price too. But let's be honest, for a can of shaving cream that lasts longer than I've lived in any apartment, this is one of the cheaper products available to mankind. So is it the economical price that makes it so popular? Is it the international marketing? I'm not so sure.

Remember the half lemon half lime that used to be on the can? Here's a commercial from 1960:

We also know that Gillette Foamy can't stop a roller coaster.

 

Remember that one? Member? Member? But was it stellar advertising that gained this apparent dud such ubiquity? I think not. Here's my guess: I picture Mr. Gillette smoking a long cigar and drinking a cocktail at, I dunno, Mar-a-Lago or wherever the filthy rich go to thumb their noses at the little people. He's talking to Mr. Loofah and Mr. Bathroom Slippers about how they got the world to use their useless products and he says that his razors are a necessity to most men. "But wouldn't it be a lark to create something totally useless like you fellows and have the entire world use it?" he chortles. "How about a cream men put on their faces before shaving?" "Too useful," Mr. Bathroom Slippers criticizes in his Asian accent, "Then they know where they shave and where they not shave."

"Good point, B.S." says Mr. Gillette. At this point Mr. Loofah looks at his lime Rickey and says, "By Jove, I have an idear!"

I think there's a good chance Gillette Lemon-Lime Foamy is a practical joke. Good thing Mr. Loofah wasn't drinking a Martini or my face would smell like an olive right now. And, yes, I think Loofahs are largely useless. You're basically rubbing yesterday's and the day before's, and maybe a bit of the day before THAT'S dry skin all over yourself.

And bathroom slippers are the biggest of the three mysteries. But here in Asia, things tend to be a bit more mysterious. I remember my first day in Korea, which was my first day in Asia. I was brought to the door of MY apartment. The apartment where I'd live for the next year. MINE. Not shared with anyone else. And when I broke the plane of the threshold with my shoes on, my Korean boss acted like I'd killed the last dragon in Korea. "SHOES! SHOES! You MUST take off SHOES!" So I apologized profusely and took off the shoes I was wearing. He showed me around and when we got to the bathroom and I broke the plane of the threshold, Mr. Lee acted as though I'd just said that kimchi was invented in Japan. "SLEEPUH! SLEEPUH! You MUST take on SLEEPUH!"

"Oh you mean THESE 'sleepuh' designed for discomfort for all but the daintiest feet?" I didn't say. I asked why and he gave the excuse that the floor might be "slippy." I am convinced that they think the word "slipper" came from that, not from the fact that you can just slip them on. "Well maybe if you'd invest 4 bucks in a shower curtain and stop showering the entire bathroom daily to clean it..." I also didn't say. Maybe they should have ass slippers too because the toilet seat, (when there's a toilet), is always wet from this "cleaning" ritual they all observe. I've never slipped off the toilet but if you're in a hurry, sometimes you get a wet arse.

So I guess what it comes down to is when you go to the home of a Korean, they don't want you to wear your shoes. They want you to wear THEIR shoes.

Not sure where I was heading with this but gimme a break, it's been over two months. My bloggin' shoes are a bit crusty. I think I was going to list a few more useless things. Like Korean bread packaging. They've come a long way since I first came here back in '97, God love 'em, but they still haven't quite figured out the bread thing. They have this notion that sealing the top of the bread bag is a good idea. Like they pass the bag through one of those plastic melting devices. Fine and dandy, you won't have anyone opening up the bread and handling it or sniffing it or, (is this REALLY a danger?), but when you open up the bag, it rips to shreds and unless you immediately use about 10 slices, there's not enough extra bag to spin and close with the bread bag closer. And if you have the bread that's packaged horizontally, not vertically, well you might as well put the bread you don't use right away into a Tupperware container and throw that useless bag out. You know the bread bag closey thing I mean? When I was young we broke them in half, affixed them to our strongest flinging fingers and flung them at our friends, family or other targets. When broken in half, that thing was called "flingers." Why doesn't it have a name while it's still intact?

How much do you reckon the inventor of THIS item made? Bread bag clip? We've all used it but who the hell knows its official name? But I have no problem with the inventor making a mint because it's a very useful item. Outside of Korea.

Now that I've warmed up again, I think I've recalled the direction this blog post was meant to take. I think I was eventually going to get to something superfluous that is near and dear to my heart: the E.S.L. recruiting company. I work for one so I don't want to be too harsh. Hahahahahaha! Did you see the ego on me? Like anyone from Carrot, the place I work, is going to read this blog! I can be as harsh-slash-honest as I want.

So I mentioned '97 was the first year I was here in Korea teaching ESL. Things were a whole lot different back then boy lemme tell ya! I bellyache about bread packaging now but there was nothing but this disgusting corn bread readily available back then. And butter hadn't made it to the sticks either. I had corn bread with animal fat for breakfast with my eggs. And bacon wasn't the bacon we all know and love. It was sam gyup sal or nothing. Not even close. But the eggs were awesome! I gotta say.

Most things have changed dramatically since then. One of the biggest changes has been the introduction and the prompt shouldering in of the recruiters on the ESL market in Korea. Not long ago there were businesses who wanted English teachers and there were English teachers. We managed to find each other just fine. Now a lot of the best jobs have to be accessed through recruiters. And they take more than their fair share of the money that the teachers make. What do they do? Largely things that the teacher could do more cheaply and efficiently.

But I sit here typing on my computer having just watched my beloved Kia Tigers win a dramatic game with an Lee Jong Beom home run, my internet is awesome and cheap, my pay is better than satisfactory and I am happy with my situation once again. So I guess things have changed in this regard, but they haven't totally changed. Back in the day we knew we were going to get ripped off a little by our hagwons or schools but in the end we got a good deal. Not what was promised, but a good deal. Things are much the same in that respect.

It was just Korean Thanksgiving here. It's called Chuseok. I had a blast! Friday night I went out to Hiteer, a pub across the street from where I work, to watch the Kia Tiger game and drink beer with Amber. They always treat me well at the Hiteer. It's not a NICE place, but then my favourite places never are nice. Tigers won! Then we went to play screen baseball. Something I've been wanting to do for a long time since coming here, but it's something you just don't do alone. They even had BEER there! It was great! We even figured out a way to cheat. When you are hitting, the other person throws the ball at the screen and the computer thinks it's a hit. It only works when the owner isn't looking though.

Next morning we went to the local par 3 course. Unfortunately DB and Ty couldn't join us because of an injury and an undisclosed matter respectively. heh heh. Ty probly got lucky. Anyway, Amber and I took to the links. We were not quite so good there as we were at the screen golf. I blame the beer from the previous night. But since we played hole 8 and 9 wrong, we played them twice so really shot 11 holes for the price of 9. It was a good deal! No birdies but we got a few pars. And only one lost ball I lost over the fence onto the road. Adrenaline spike I guess. ???

Then we packed up and went to meet DB in Hong Dae to watch the Tiger game. We went to a fish restaurant where they had the game on the big screen. The owner was from Gwangju so that's why he was playing the Tigers. Since DB is from there and Amber and I have lived there before, we were honoured guests. They had 1000 cc mugs there! I had to get one of those! And, the Tigers won! After that we went for a few more beers at a classic music pub. Well it wasn't a pub and the music, though old, wasn't as good as I'd hoped. They had a deal on some really good beers, 3 + 1. I ordered three Big Wave Ales. I had tried it at a chicken hof in Icheon and if was tasty. It cost me 8 thousand won there so I only had one. At THIS place it was actually 11 thousand won! So the 3+1 wasn't quite as good a deal as it seemed. See how they get you? But that didn't stop us from having a few more.

We slept in our air b&b then DB packed up. He had to go back to Incheon to work. Amber and I could stay one more day. So we did some shopping and some wandering around Hong Dae looking for a good place to watch the Tiger game. We found a baked chicken place and by 2 o'clock we were eating chicken, (again), and watching baseball. The beer wasn't really going down that great at first but we powered through and by the time Irene showed up, we were all feeling pretty good. DB went home and Amber, Irene and I wandered around looking for something to do. I think it was Amber who got the idea to go bowling. So off we went to find a bowling lane where the lights were off and everything was glowing in the blue light. We absolutely sucked! I mean golf and baseball? We were experts compared to our bowling! I'm not kidding! And I was once good at that game. But again it was fun. Except for the annoyingly loud and sucky music.

Irene went home and Amber and I went out for a few more drinks before hitting the hay. Next day we went back to Incheon to meet Dave and Crystle and play some board games. It was Monday so there was no baseball. That's the day off in the Korean Baseball Organization. I was a hurting unit! Too much drinking and not enough sleep had caught up to me. But Crystle brought a game called Quirkle and Dave brought one called For Sale and folks, these games were hangover killers! I am going to look for both of them for Christmas presents. Two of the best games I've ever played and I hadn't played either until that day. Dave left early for date night with his wife but he allowed Crystle, Amber and me to use his game. We sat outside a convenience store and played Quirkle and For Sale for a couple more hours. Best hangover EVER!

Next day was the last day of Chuseok. I had to make my way back to Icheon and I was scared. From Incheon to Icheon is a difficult commute on a GOOD day. But if you know anything about Korean Chuseok, you know it's a day when most Koreans meet in their ancestral homes, (not in Seoul. Usually in the "country"), and eat and drink together. They thank God, their ancestors and historical heroes of Korea who have made it the place it is today. But when the entire population goes somewhere ALL at the same time, it seems a little less great. Even, I'm sure, for Koreans. But that doesn't stop them. They brave Chuseok nightmare traffic every year.

It turned out I had nothing to worry about. Amber showed me a good bus from Incheon to Gangnam Station in Seoul and from there I got a ticket for a bus to Icheon that left 20 minutes later. I left at 2:20 and by 3:00 I could see the SKhyix tower. NO traffic either way! I was shocked! But very happy.

Wow! This turned into a pretty positive post! I wonder if there's anything I could add to bring it down to my usual level of grumpiness. Like something else that I find totally useless.

WAIT A MEWMENT!!! I've got it!

I would be remiss if I left out my latest boycott. As my 4 loyal readers may know, I've been doing my best to completely avoid Nestle. For years now. Since I heard about what they are doing with water in Canada and around the world. It's been tough to avoid Kit Kats and ice cream and Nescafe coffee since it's everywhere in Asia and in some parts, it's cornered the market. But to my knowledge I've done it. Now I think I am going to move on to a much tougher boycott. One that involves Mcdonald's and Burger King. The two comfort food havens that I use for breakfast and lunch or dinner respectively while in Asia. I sometimes eat Mcdonald's for lunch or dinner but their breakfasts are the best. But it seems these two struggling corporations feel the need to introduce austerity measures in all of their Asian franchises. You see, paying human beings is breaking these poor companies. So they've resorted to machines. And now when you go to either one of these places, you have to WORK for your meal. YOU have to punch in your order and pay at the machine. (And I'm not even going to get into how much money they might be making from reading the credit cards we insert into those machines and selling information from them. I'm not. But if I WERE to do so, I'd tell you how everybody who works here, where they make the chips to store that information is telling me how it's the most valuable thing in the world right now and ALL the major corporations are scrambling to get it in any way they can.)

Instead, let me tell you now, the Mcdonald's machines are a pain in the arse for an English speaker. Oh they have an English button but I have never been able to get through the process in EITHER language. So I always end up just going to the counter. At BK I have never yet bothered to use the fucking machines. And it's nice because you bypass any line there may be and go straight to the counter where it may take some extra effort, but you can always catch someone's attention and order. And in my experience, I have never yet received my order AFTER the dummies fumbling around with those infernal machines.

I think maybe the workers have realized that because of those machines, Mcdonald's cuts down the staff not by the right amount, but enough to MORE than offset the work of the machines and the customers. They ARE rich corporations after all. I see these poor people already working one of the hardest jobs in the world for shit wages, running around like the kitchen is the friggin' stock market. And I don't mind telling you I think it's the sanitation that suffers. They don't have time to do their regular duties AND pick up the slack for the missing staff caused by the fucking machines, so something HAS to suffer. It's the cleaning. I will regale you with two stories from Chuseok here in Korea on this matter.

It was Wednesday morning. I wanted to get a good breakfast before going back to Icheon so Amber figured out that Mcdonald's near her and DB's place stops breakfast at 10:20 and it's about 30 minutes away. It was 9:40ish when I learned of this. So I shot out the door and quickly speed-walked to Mcdonald's. I was proud (but sweaty) to get there with a whole 10 minutes to spare. But still time was tight. I attempted to use the machine but ran into the same problem as ever. I thought of switching to the other machine but some people were using it. So I just went to the counter. Everybody pretended not to notice me and went about their cooking and distributing, so I hammered on the counter and said, kind of loudly and rudely, "Yopaseyo! Chogyuh!" These are ways to get a waiter or waitress's attention. But it worked. I said to the nice girl who came, "I can't use those machines." And proceeded to place my order. Almost INSTANTLY I had everything and was eating it. There were flies hovering overhead, landing on my food and, (I'm sorry but), making maggots on or near my food because the overworked staff hadn't had time to clean, but still, I was eating. I can only imagine what it was like in the kitchen where the customer can't see.

I got my breakfast at about 10:19. I almost finished my breakfast before the people who were at the other machine sat down to eat. I think they took so long because while they were ordering 10:20 rolled around and they had to change their orders. So they were eating Big Macs and fries at 10:30 while I was still enjoying my bacon and egg Mcmuffin.

Keep in mind, this is Korea where they don't tip. They don't tip because, unlike us dummies in tipping countries, they realize that tipping is just a way for restaurant owners to get stupid customers to pay the salaries of their workers for them. In essence it is no different than these machines.

Example #2: After my nice breakfast, I got a couple things I was shopping for and went to Amber and DB's, packed up and Amber took me to the bus stop. I got on the bus and went to Gangnam Express Bus Terminal in Seoul.... where there is a Burger King! I often eat there when I'm getting a bus ticket to somewhere or other. I like the quatro cheese Whopper. So I get my bus ticket, which, as I said before, I purchased a mere 20 minutes before departure, a Chuseok miracle (!!!) then go to BK to get some lunch. To my horror they have installed two of those evil machines in MY Burger King! I just walked right past all the people struggling through their orders and a very nice girl met me at the counter. AGAIN almost instantly I got my meal. Well before anyone at the machines.

Here's my hopeful theory: I think the workers at these places hate the machines too. I think they know better than anybody how much extra work the machines cause the people and they hate the damn things. So when a freedom fighter like me boycotts them and goes to the counter, they serve me first! I'm saving their job or at least making it easier. They'd be ungrateful NOT to.

Long story short, I think these bag your own groceries, pay to use a bank machine, serve your own coffee, order your own products scams are boycott worthy and I'm going to start eating at (ugh) Lotteria if I have to in order to avoid them. I think Lotteria will soon install them though.

If you read my story about Hong Kong where I went to Mcdonalds and was FORCED to use the machine and stormed out, went across the road and ate at Jollibee, you'll know this is not a new pet peeve. Please join me in not being forced to work for these large corporations for no pay. Not to mention support them hiring less people and more machines. When they don't NEED to save the money. My contention is that it won't save them as much money as they think when we start walking out. In fact, if we can work together, it'll COST them money and that's the only way we can beat them. It's just a battle in the war, but let's start now folks. Even self-serve gas! Yes I said it. I can remember when self serve gas was cheaper because we pumped it ourselves and saved Esso or whoever some money. Is it still cheaper? I haven't bought gas for a decade. I bet it's not. But at least the gas companies gave us a deal for doing their work for them. Not like the banks who have the gaul to actually CHARGE us for saving them money in wages by using their bank machines.

This is useless. Probably the MOST useless thing there is. It's gotta stop.

Happy Chuseok. Chuseok Jal Bonhosayo.

Blame it on My Brain

Probably the most asked question in English is one iteration or other of, “How are you?” But I bet the second most asked question is, “What do you do?” In my state of advanced mankind disillusionment called “old age,” I can't help hearing, “What do you do?” as, “What company owns you?”

If I do some rough calculations, I could figure out the depressing amount of money I have made over a life of employment that has included some of the hardest jobs imaginable. I've been a tree planter, a diamond driller and I've worked in the fast food industry. But for those inquisitive folks who want to know what it is that I do, perhaps a more pertinent calculation would be how much money I have made for my owners over the years. And that number is a bit harder to come by, though probably much MORE depressing.

I've never been one to lose sleep over what I would do without my employment and source of income. I HAVE wondered what my owners would do without me on drunken indulgences of exaggerated indispensability usually shortly before or after quitting a job, but those were a bit short-sighted. Most would answer, “Elementary, they'd get another worker.”

As I see it, this is a major problem in our society and increasingly, the world. Not just that it is thought to be the simplest thing in the world for employers to find good workers, but that the majority of us worry, many absolutely obsess, about what on earth we would do without our precious jobs. This, in large part, is what gives our owners ownership of us.

I'll give you another example. In Canada the government wants to introduce a tax on big factories that belch tonnes and tonnes of shit into the clean air of Canada every year. What a terrible idea! Fascist even! You see, the logic is that the cost of gas and oil and heating and other things will go up if this carbon tax is introduced. People are so well trained we don't even notice the important step in between the introduction of a new tax and the raising of gas and oil and home heating prices that happens with the regularity of a knee-jerk and is publicly allowed to the point of apathy. That step is the one when the big factories and companies raise their prices so they don't have to pay the tax at all, their customers do. We all know they have done this forever, (i.e. they've never really paid any tax at all), they've just foisted their tax responsibilities onto an over cooperative, not to say stupid, public.

The same tax dodgers who own these companies are the douche bags who own US. That is, they pay our wages. Now if they ever gave us a raise, it would just defeat the purpose of hiking up the cost of their products and services, wouldn't it? Hence, the situation we have in our country where the prices of EV - REH – THING are skyrocketing while wages have stagnated.

And don't be foolish enough to think that every time the big companies encounter an expense, they only raise their prices enough to offset it and pass that expense onto the public. They raise their prices more, sometimes a lot more. That's why the country, (meaning them), is getting richer while the people, (meaning us), are struggling to make ends meet.

The middle class is being eliminated. Never have the haves and have-nots been so far apart! The results, as can be expected, are stats like by the age of 30 the average Canadian has a savings of ZERO. It's even worse in the States, who our government inexplicably models itself after, where the average 30-year-old's savings cannot be expressed as a positive number and 50% of the people in the country, I repeat - 50% could not come up with 500 bucks if their lives depended on it. 50% is the median, folks. This means it's the average. The average American doesn't have 500 bucks. They're BROKE! And Canada is following right along behind them like a puppy dog to a Korean kitchen.

“But the U.S. is a rich country,” says President Cheesy Poof, “We've never had a more robust economy.” While this is true in the sense that the country has pulled in a crater full of dough, that dough is almost all ending up in the hands of a very few people. So when that rug headed manchild talks about, “the country,” or “the U.S.,” or “We,” he means himself and all his buddies, the douche bag owners and tax dodgers of the country. And it's no wonder they owners and controllers of the U.S. and Canada have all had a great year because they've been busy for a long time changing laws in our countries to re-route all the cash to the top so that they can have such a wonderful year and then tell us, the people financing their happiness with our blood, sweat and tears, that WE are enjoying ourselves too.

 

But I might not even know what I'm talking about. It's been a long time since I blogged because of China. I just today got my internet hooked up and feel comfortable again. It has been years since I could say I am working legally and comfortably. And I am truly thankful to Korea for that!

 

I can't get that comfortable in my own country though and I think it's largely because of the things above. But I'm learning that a lot of things I thought I was sure of, are wrong! More and more lately. Am I getting old? It used to be pretty hard to prove me wrong. That was because I didn't argue about something unless I was positive about it. Even THEN I still wouldn't argue sometimes. Nowadays it seems I am more argumentative even when I'm wrong. The thing is, I truly believe I'm right! How have I come by such faulty information and why haven't I been corrected. I'm talking about beliefs that I've held for decades!

 

For instance, I've been asked by 100 people if I've been asked by one, "What is the coldest weather you've heard of in Canada?" I always say, "White River, Ontario. -72 degrees Celsius! I know this because I lived very close to White River in Northern Ontario and I travelled there and saw with mine own eyes the giant thermometer that reads -72 degrees. Well very recently I found out that that temperature is Fahrenheit! What the hell? Why? IT'S CANADA! Maybe it's to trick us all into THINKING it's colder than it is. It's almost -58 Celsius, so I've only been off by 14 degrees, but still... Twenty odd years of certainty blown away with one google.

 

Then a good friend told me her daughter just got her orange belt in Tae Kwon Do. When I practiced, there were no orange belts. But when I heard the news I had just finished off goodly portions of both beer and scotch, so, "They didn't have orange belts when and where I took Tae Kwon Do," became, "Your daughter is going to a fraudulent school! There's no orange belt in the whole world of Tae Kwon Do! YOU SHOULD SUE!" Well upon an internet search the next morning, then a follow-up search to see if the first search was wrong, then another follow-up follow-up, I had to admit to myself, (but not yet to my friend or her daughter), that, yes, there are orange belts in Tae Kwon Do. Now is this a new thing? Are there different schools? Does it depend on the teacher or the country? It seems the answers to all of these are yes. Some Tae Kwon Do schools have orange and some don't. So I shouldn't have been quite so argumentative.

 

Did you see what I did just there with the parenthetical statement? Comma, space, parenthesis, blah, blah, blah parenthesis, comma, space? It's, (like this), and then I keep writing... I've been doing that for I dunno how long. You can read this blog and go back years and see it. I was editing the new text for this quarter at work and suggested it because someone had used bare brackets (like this) and it just didn't look right to me.

 

Now look, I wrote dozens of papers for teachers and other inspectors who were absolute sticklers for proper punctuation, citation, spelling and grammar. Of course! I was an English Lit. major! I'm talking profs who reckoned a misplaced dot or an errant comma in a citation tantamount to intellectual property theft! One percent per mistake! I'm not kidding. If you wrote a PERFECT paper, (and the English program at my university would find fault with something written by Merriam Webster, (see I did it again)), and you made 10 TINY mistakes in reference citation, you got 90 on it.

 

And I put up with 7 years of that until I was writing papers without deductions at all! And now something I was pretty darn sure of, just today, proven wrong. I immediately start asking myself questions. How long have I been doing this wrong? How long has it BEEN wrong? Was it EVER right? Are there different schools of thought on this? Is it something stylistic? Is it because I'm doing it the old way or just because I'm old and doing it the way my Alzheimer riddled brain misremembers it?  Because, I mean, it just looks neater, (like this), to me. When you do this(it looks cramped)but I've started, (since this morning when I was proven wrong), noticing both the other two, but nowhere have I seen it like I do it! HOW THE HELL have I missed this? It's EVERYWHERE! Even in Korean!

 

I agree, a comma plus a parenthesis is like a double comma or double parenthesis. It's very, very redundant. (like very, very) But parentheticals like the one to the left just seem to be floating there to me if they're not anchored down with a weighty comma at both ends. No? Am I just wrong? Can I really be the only person who feels this way? Has it always been thus?

 

I'm not satisfied yet. It seems to me direct quotes are set apart far more redundantly, aren't they? It is with a comma,

 

                              

                              "Two spaces, indentation both sides, quotes at both ends

                          and another two spaces that direct quotations are separated."

 

 

So, (this doesn't seem that redundant, now does it), my dear reader? But it's wrong. I keep doing it, but it's wrong.

 

It may seem a trifle to you, but now I'm questioning absolutely everything. What do I believe to be true that just isn't? Are you supposed to put a space between the last word of a question and the question mark ? For all I know that could be correct. Or what about this  ? Or even this   ? If someone challenged me I don't know that I'd feel confident enough to argue right now.

 

But maybe I needed a little humbling. Maybe it'll be good for me and for this blog.

 

So back to the original points I was protesting: I could be totally wrong. I don't even know where I got that stat about Americans not being able to come up with 500 bucks. It could be total bullshit. ALL the stats could be. And maybe we should all be happy having any job at all while the rich get richer and so do our countries. Maybe it won't be bad when EVERY country introduces a social credit score that smacks of Orwellian elitism, separates the rich and poor like a schoolyard pick for a game of Kill Each Other, and doggonnit, I'm going to do it again, (China's already introduced one that will be implemented by 2020), maybe we're just weak and deserve to be owned by the rich, who are our betters.

 

I probably shouldn't speak so definitively about such things because Canada uses Fahrenheit, Tae Kwon Do uses orange belts, and (I'm so uncomfortable with this!) THIS is correct! What the hell, I might just be getting old and losing my mind. Well, at least I can use that excuse. And it gets valider and valider every day.

 

What? More valid you say? Hell if it is! Really? But it only has two syllables! Ah, yer probly right. My brain's goin'.

Two Weeks From Salvation

I haven't made it yet but on June 25, my first official payday, I will have gone about half a year without a paycheck. That is something I'll never do again short of retirement or some disastrously long hospital stay.

Now THERE'S a lovely way to open up a post!

Take two: I am two weeks away from getting out of yet another fine mess this ESL madness has landed me in. I certainly couldn't have done it without a lot of patience and help from solid friends and loving family. I said to my Mom in a recent letter I wrote to her, "I think maybe this time, (what is it, my dozenth attempt?), maybe I can make a go of this independence thing.

Now I don't want to give the impression I'm completely out of the woods. No sir, I wouldn't want to give that impression. I'm still not a card carrying alien yet. And the person in charge of setting up my visa run just happily went off on vacation for a month. So I don't even know if he'll be back before my visitor's visa runs out. I might just have to do it myself and put in for a reimbursement. lol

And since the pay periods start and end on the 15ths of months and I started on the 1st, it'll only be a half check at best I'm getting on the 25th. That said, half a check will be enough to get me through the next month. If only I didn't have to get my things delivered from China!!! I hate the first month! You get the least when you need the most. Then in the last month you have all this bonus cash coming when you need it the least. Though I can't say I DISlike it when that happens. It's been a long time...

Anyhoo, I like the job I have! The execs I am teaching are just old buzzards like me. Most are a little bit older. They listen to the music I like, eat the extreme food I like, watch baseball like me, and drink a bit too much like I am wont to do. They have two major differences from me: 1. They have wives and kids. All of them. 2. They have been working for SK hynix for many years and have more money in the bank now than I will ever earn. Do you suppose there's a relation there somewhere?

I am getting settled in here. I did my first week, June 1, and only had two classes. Then last week I had Wednesday off. So I've taught 5 full days. Thing is, I get paid on the 25th, only two weeks away.  And, bonus, Wednesday off this week too! The salary is more than any job I've ever worked in the industry. And if I get an extra class here in there, and I'm told they're coming, I'll be pulling in more than when I was diamond drilling. Well, to be honest, I already AM! Good old Canadian taxes!

Most of the students are different. Some want to learn business terms, some want news articles, some want to improve listening, some want to just maintain their English levels and maybe improve a little. Over the years I've built up a library of books and lessons that can accommodate all of the above. And we'll have some fun while we're at it.

The compound I'm on is quite nice! It has lots of coffee shops, several tennis courts, a gym for basketball, badminton, ping pong, and working out, even a swimming pool and bowling alley! There's a soccer field, two jaegi fields, (that's Korean soccer tennis), two mini soccer fields, a goldfish pond, 3 cafeterias, lots of banks, and some shops. And the buildings where I work all have FANTASTIC bathrooms! No dropping my phone in the squatter or seeing the guy next to me having a smoke and playing Angry Birds while he's blasting out yesterday's noodles. We have those fancy toilets with heated seats, air dry and squirt up the bum if you so desire! And there is always soap and paper towels. I don't even poop at home. I save it for work.

There ARE some drawbacks. Of course. The computer I'm doing this on is a laptop and I haven't yet made the purchase of a keyboard so I have to stop every few lines to delete some words that were written two paragraphs above where they were supposed to be. Dang sensitive mouse pads! Grrrr! My operating system is also in Korean and I have found some useful tips on Youtube on how to change your computer from Korean to English by going to the control panel and selecting the language setting, only both of those are IN Korean, so that's not helping. And every once in a while the internet cable comes out. Or just the slightest bump will disconnect it. It doesn't come right out, just loses connection. So not only do I have to avoid the mouse pad with my sausage finger, I have to type softly. I'll eventually work it out though. I am learning the ctrl key commands. Like ctrl P for print and ctrl S for save. Rather than learn the Korean spots on the page where they might be. And this is not laziness, they are not easy to find.

Also, due to very tight security in the highly competitive semiconductor industry, I can't bring in my external hard drive and put my extensive library of lessons onto this computer. I had to put them on Google Drive and there wasn't quite enough room. But I got most of them on there. I have to cover both camera lenses on my phone and pass my bag through an x-ray machine every time I come or go from the office too. It's like riding transit in China for crying out loud! But at least I don't need to bring my passport.

The dorms will take some getting used to. The worst thing about them is there is no wifi. If I want to play a game or check email or just surf, it costs me data. And I have a limit. 6 Gigs. Sounds like a lot but I've burned through half of it already. You try going without internet. I dare ya! We're hooked, people! It's how they'll bring us down in the end. We'll be following the Pied Wifier as he leads us all like webless lemmings off a cliff. "Must youtube! Need to check email! Facebook! Facebook! Fa...AAAAAGGGHHHHH IHOPETHERE'SINTERNETINTHEAFTERLIFE?" Thud!

The second worst thing is the lack of refrigeration. We have an aircon, couldn't live without that, but there are no fridges. Not in my room, not in the common room, not in the entire dorm. We have one in the office that is shared amongst about 10 teachers but that's not great. Can't really stock that with beer for the weekend, can I? And for a fella who likes to do his own cooking, this is gonna suck.

Thanks to some great supplying of the necessities from my American bootlegging buddies Heather and Mike, I have the clothes I need until my shipment comes in from China. They gave me birthday socks and underwear, new job shirts, welcome back to Korea shorts and polo shirts and I even got a few Christmas garments in there from them. Even Oma and Pap got me a Canadian hat and T shirt. But I have to say it'll be great to get my comfy clothing back. And I got a care package waiting for me from Mom next time I visit Heather and Mike. So everybody's pulled together to take care of me in this time of hardship. But I'm hoping to rebel and start a life of my own at the age of 51.

Crap! Just hammering the John Bonham rambling drum roll from Ramble On and I knocked the internet out. I just have to fiddle with the plug to get it back but then gotta reboot. Wastes time.

HAH! It's a couple days later now and I got a new keyboard from Daiso across the street. 5000 won! Good old cheap Japanese crap! Woohoo! Can you tell the difference? I sure can!

The food situation will only last a couple of weeks. I'm sure I can find a little fridge and there's one burner in the kitchen. I'll make do. But in a small town it's still a bit tough to find all the foods I want. Like for spaghetti sauce I'll have to chop up beef. No ground beef anywhere. But a trip into Seoul or maybe even downtown might be the remedy. I have some scouting around to do. And I can't say I am not excited about that. I love finding the good places in a new town.

But I'm getting closer to stability once again. Salvation comes in many forms. I guess getting a job back here in Korea qualifies for me. And I've been told the contract will be re-evaluated for the new year. If it is not renewed, I'll just have to change again. I hate to say this but most of the experience I've had with Carrot so far makes me wonder how they could land such a big contract in the first place let alone keep it. But I hope things can improve there as well. With luck they will finally figure out my CRC reimbursement two months after it was promised and they will get my visa run organized at the last minute. See what I mean?

But I have hope for this new gig. I always do at the beginning don't I? And so far all that's made for is some fine blog fodder. So stay tuned, there may be more to come.

No Reply At All

I have received a lot of comments from friends and family lately about how they can't believe the shit I put up with in the overseas ESL life I have manufactured for myself. My sister, Jenn, keeps telling me I should just give it up and move back to Canada. So does my Mom. My friend Jenny says she doesn't know how I put up with the abuse I go through. And when you are broke and unemployed, people see you differently. They look down on you consciously or subconsciously and give you advice that is appreciated, but sometimes a little insulting in its simplicity. Like, "Why don't you come back to Canada and teach in Canadian schools?" My friend Jessica is doing that now. There are some small differences between my friend Jessica and me. For instance, she worked for 10 years straight in Korea and brought home over 60,000 bucks in pension alone, not including her savings over that period. Also, she has a teaching certificate. "People are crying for teachers in North America! You should come back," she advised.

I tried years ago, and I tried years before THAT and years before THAT. Every time it became harder, not easier. I can't even teach ESL in the schools where I taught in Canada before, let alone teach in public schools. Canadian education has become a business and I would have to do over 2 years, probably 3, to get the one-year education certificate I need to teach in Canada. And it now costs 10 times what it cost for a year of Canadian university when I last attended. From 5 grand in 1994 to 50 grand in 2018. I've looked into it. This isn't improving the teaching ability, just making it more expensive and time-consuming for the teachers.

"You should come to Viet Nam! It'd be easy for you to get work here," advised my friend, Dan, who has been working there for a while. He even gave me a few places to apply. I applied and found that they all require Cambridge CELTA certificates. I have an old TESL certificate that cannot be verified by the good people of CELTA, so I am unacceptable in places of employment in the CELTA neighbourhoods. This is the same in Canada with Canada TESL. They are like mafia. They go from school to school and get them to refuse anyone without a CELTA in exchange for not breaking the legs of the teachers they have at their schools currently teaching. Or money, or free practicum teaching, or whatever. It's all just superfluous middlemen insinuating themselves into an industry that was just fine and dandy without them. There is absolutely NO evidence, (or chance), that they have improved teaching ability. Just made it more expensive and time-consuming for the teachers.

"You should put in for work in Azerbaijan! I know a place that is desperate for a teacher! Tell them you are the guy I told them about," my friend, Allen offered. I DID put in for the job and never heard from them even though I had been talked up to them by Allen. This is a common occurrence in the ESL industry. Nobody answers emails unless they feel you can make them money or help them. Even when you CAN make them money or help them, they STILL don't answer sometimes. It has to do with the deterioration of work ethic, professionalism and courtesy in the industry.

Let me give you a great ferinstance: The company I have recently signed on with for a year, Carrot Global Inc., a language company/recruiter, has been quite irresponsible to this point and I see no signs of it ending. When I first had contact with them I was up for a job in Naju at Korea Electric Power Company. KEPCO. I arranged for an interview, bought a 50-dollar train ticket to Naju and had the interview cancelled at the last second. Then a week later had another interview scheduled, bought a train ticket and the interview was cancelled at the last second. Both times I had to return the ticket and lose 5% of what I'd paid. Carrot was nice enough to reimburse me for this, but it was the poor performance from them that cost me this job. Hours before the second interview I was instructed to fill in some forms that had information on them that Carrot had already received. I could have done this at any time during the previous two weeks, but it wasn't thought about until the eleventh hour. Had I dealt with KEPCO directly, I have no doubt I'd be working there now. But because of the ubiquitous recruiters who have shouldered in on the ESL racket here in Korea, mainly for their ability to relieve the clients of the burden of dealing, in English, with the teachers, here I remain, unemployed.

So what they get at recruiting firms are Kyopos who are Koreans who lived in English speaking countries and speak fluently, or people who have learned English through hard study. These people have no problem finding work in Korea. They usually find multiple jobs and work impossible hours thereby diminishing their job performance at all of their jobs. When I say work ethic is suffering, I don't mean willingness to work long hours, I mean ability to handle the hours you work.

Anyway, I kept in touch with the first recruiter and she put me into another job opportunity with Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power also down near Naju. KHNP. They asked me to go to an interview down south but I explained that I'd rather do it in Seoul. Carrot's offices are in Seoul and they have one of these valuable Kyopos working there named Chris, who had lived in Canada for a long time. So they set me up for an interview with Chris. Wouldn't you know it, THAT interview was cancelled too! Last minute. After lots of waiting, I finally had the interview after some more waiting. It went well. They called me in, after a little bit more waiting, to sign contracts. Then they postponed THAT appointment because Chris wasn't available. But we finally got it done. After some more waiting.

At contract signing time I told Chris it would take 2 weeks for me to get my criminal record check. If they needed a certified degree, it was going to take a lot longer because I'd also have to send the original degree, plus a copy, plus a scan of my passport, plus get sealed transcripts sent to the Korean Embassy in Ottawa. So he said, "Okay, I'll find out for sure if we need the stamped degree or not then get back to you tomorrow." This was 21 days before May 14th when KHNP wanted me to start teaching.

So that day I prepared all the documents I needed to send to Ottawa, (I had been fingerprinted the day before because I like to do things in advance). I was prepared to send a scan of my passport, a scan of my degree, and the original if I had to. I heard nothing from anyone at Carrot the next day. Then it was the weekend. Still nothing but I thought Chris probably wasn't working and we'd probably have to wait till Monday to send anything anyway. Monday rolls around. STILL nothing, but I reckoned it was probably because it was a Korean holiday. Labour Day of sorts. Then Tuesday comes and I hear nothing from Chris. I didn't yet have a phone so I borrowed my friend Heather's phone and called him to ask, (as politely as I could), what the fuck was taking so long. He said he'd look into it the next day and get back to me. He DID! And we found that FOR SURE I didn't need the degree. So that was good news, though the six days Chris had wasted would probably have been enough to get the extra documents, but at least, (there's that phrase again), I didn't have to pay the considerable extra money.

So the documents were sent. Five days ago I received word that the fingerprints were submitted to the RCMP in Ottawa. They would take 2-3 working days to make the Criminal Record Check, then submit it to the Korean Embassy where they would take a day or two to "apostille" the thing and give it back. After that it would be sent express mail, (2-3 days), to the offices of Carrot in Kangnam, Seoul. So optimistically thinking, I'll get it at the end of this week. Either today or tomorrow. Pessimistically, I'll get it on the weekend. I can go to Japan Sunday, file for my visa at the Korean embassy there early Monday morning and come back Tuesday. I'll miss two days. Out of a year.

Well, I received word from Chris yesterday that KHNP has decided they don't want me any more. Remember, there's a signed contract here. It's a contract WITH Carrot, but to work FOR KHNP. I asked Chris why they bailed and he said it was the work visa situation. So obviously KHNP was not told that the visa would take two weeks, (probably because of the 6 days Chris had wasted), and they were expecting me there BEFORE the teaching was to begin. To, oh I dunno... get me settled in my house, get me a pass to get into the company, MEET me... Should not have been a problem, but here we are.

I sent an email to two of the Carrot workers who work at the KHNP offices where I would have been teaching asking them not to give up just because I'll miss two days of work. But I have my doubts that my pleas will be appreciated.

I WAS offered another job by Chris, in Ilsan, starting the next day. That would have been impossible but he said that Carrot had something else in Icheon. If that word rings a bell in the ears of a loyal reader, it might be because that is where I had a job with Lincoln International School that was cancelled when their major investor got sent to prison for fraud. Anyway, he says it pays better and starts in June. I told him to send me the details of the offer, but I didn't want to abandon ship on KHNP just yet. He said, "Okay, I have a meeting to go to now, but I'll send that information tomorrow." Tomorrow was yesterday. No information. It's almost noon two days afterward and as yet no information. Are you sensing a pattern here?

The question remains, why the hell DO I put up with this shit? I will answer in cartoon form:

Bear in mind, when I was offered the job with Carrot, I had 4 jobs pending. Victoria U. in Shenyang still says they will hire me for the next semester in Sept. but I told them I won't make it that long so I have taken the job here with Carrot. They understood and said they'd send back my paperwork. No offer to share in the thousand dollar expense for the paperwork, but that's no surprise. I received all my paperwork from them by courier yesterday. If I could get my foreign expert certificate cancelled, we'd just hand that all in and bingo!

The dream contract in Ningbo at the International school still wants me and they are NOW saying the foreign expert certificate doesn't even need to be cancelled to get work there. They were telling me to get it cancelled a month ago. THEY couldn't help me but I needed to cancel it. When I tell them I don't want the job, now I don't need to get it cancelled? Well, that job sounded too good to be true anyway.

I am told that I would be a shoe-in for the job that Donseo University in Busan defunded before I could start it. But that's not until September either. I haven't yet burned that bridge though. We'll see how things pan out with Carrot, or, as I am increasingly paranoid of, if I get ANY work at all from them!

I also have an offer from Saudi Arabia. They interviewed me and were a little sketchy about my TESL asking if it could be verified as a CELTA equivalent or some shit like that. Obviously the CELTA mafia is moving in THERE too. I sent back a reply saying that the interviewer couldn't give me a clear answer about housing and that housing is as important to me as the CELTA shit seems to be to them. That was the big problem with Beijing where I had to live in a hostel and pay over 1200 bucks a month. I actually received another offer from them with an increase in pay to over 4000 American dollars a month. They would take care of visa, relocation, flight, and even give me spending money for the first month. I could be working there NOW if not for the Carrot offer. When I refused, the recruiter told me to keep in touch in case the Carrot thing fell through. I MAY be in touch with him soon...

I am starting to believe the deal with Carrot just might fall through, and mark the fifth contract I've killed recently. Despite email and text message to Chris, he still hasn't sent me the details of the offer he promised to send yesterday. When I received the paperwork from VU, I had to deal with some poor sod at the DHL office who didn't speak English. I'm sorry to sound elitist but at the international shipping department of the German company, DHL, even in Korea, you probably should have some English ability. He sent me an email, all in Korean, saying that they need me to send them some information that they will use to fill out a customs form the purpose of which is to verify that I allow them to use my information at customs to fill out this form.

Luckily, I was able to translate it and get the gist. The form, however, which was not attached to the email, but given in the body of the email, on some Korean program, got completely messed up upon mailing. It didn't matter much anyway, I couldn't make changes to the document as the email. There WAS an attachment, but it was just the DHL logo. Forehead smack!

I just wrote an email saying that I give them permission to use my info for customs and then just listed my passport, SIN, document number, address, phone, absolutely everything I could. It arrived late last night, two days after we started this nonsense. My concern is that the same thing might happen with my criminal record check that I actually NEED. The one coming from the Korean embassy that I need to work for Carrot. That could throw things out of whack and I'd need to miss MORE than the two days of work.

I'll just have to wait and see...

In the mean time, my good buddy, Guns, gave me his old IPhone and I got a month of service for it. Even though Chris knows my number and can now call or text, I still get no reply at all. I've constantly got that song going through my head these days. Genesis - No Reply At All. It's a classic.

*** It may come as no surprise at all that I have still received no reply at all from Carrot and it's now May 14th, the day I was supposed to start work in Nampyeong for KHNP. Since then I have lost all phone ability too. I try to text now or make a phone call and it just says "not sent" or "call ended." This is because the wifi where I am staying either went off completely or was so weak it didn't register on my phone. But I don't think I was doing anything on the phone because I was trying to preserve my calling and data. I got about ten dings while my phone was charging from the telephone company saying my data and calling were all used up. HOW? My phone was charging! Was something running in the background using up my minutes?

Anyway, I sent a text 4 days ago and an email 4 hours ago to Chris saying we need to meet up and discuss what the hell is going on. And... no reply at all...

At Least I'm Not a Chinese Migrant Worker

Whelp,

Some new shit has come to light. Given the nature of this new shit, it's not just, uh, it might not be just a stupid new immigration rule that's blocking my foreign expert certificate. I'm privy to some new information. My thinking about this case has been all wrong.

Evidently, Diana, the only name I knew the owner of Huasheng by, has a friend named Ms. Zhang Wei who works at the Shanxi Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs. Yeah, the office where my expired foreign expert certificate remains illegally un-cancelled. They're good friends. Like good enough to break the law for one another I guess.

I have her email and have sent her a request to cancel said document but my guess is she won't be hopping to that any time soon. I also tried to send my story along with this person's contact information to a couple of the agencies in China where they are supposed to be looking out for the lowly worker. And when I say that I am embarrassed at how much lowlier than I the lowliest of the lowly migrant workers in China really are. But as an ESL teacher, I still count myself amongst them.

Here's a quote from this article:

"Few would contest the terrible conditions faced by many Chinese workers – especially the 150 million members of the “floating population,” who migrate to urban areas from their poor homes in the countryside. These men, women and children often work without written contracts in dangerous conditions for up to eighteen hours per day and under $100 per month."

And like mine, these salaries are often paid late or not at all. 150 MILLION! It seems the dozen or so workers at Huasheng who were hired and never paid are just a drop in the bucket! This is much more common practice in China that I had thought! I wonder if it's such common practice that these poor girls, (and the two male drivers), who I worked with at Huasheng may have been EXPECTING IT! I don't remember any of them being overly outraged or even having much or anything bad to say about the people who had just ripped them off a month's wages. Maybe they were told that if they complained, there are people in government offices who are friends that will make their prospects for work shrink considerably. The old, "You tell anyone about this and you'll never work in this town again," ploy. 

Anyway, I am from a country where we have labour standards and I wasn't about to let this go. So I did a search. In English. It is NOT easy to find anyone to contact about such things. Presumably because it's a new thing and, as the article describes, corporations, like American ones, who take advantage of this cheap labour, have threatened to "divest" themselves from China if they treat their lowly workers with any dignity. And as the corporations pressure China to keep labour standards abysmal and labour costs exploitatively cheap, they pretend to tisk tisk the human rights violations in China. Our world!

Another quote from the article is what I've been blathering about in the posts about this:

"However, the rights and standards which Beijing writes on paper do not help workers unless they are enforced throughout the country."

The ministry I managed to find whose job it is on paper to ensure transparency, enforce new and reasonable labour laws, and root out and punish corruption is the S.P.P. The Supreme People's Procuraturate! It even SOUNDS powerful but that last word will always be underlined in red squiggly. I don't think it's a word. But never mind, I found their website, which was, simply enough, www.spp.gov.cn. I went looking for an email where I could inform somebody of my story. It was all in Chinese but there was a letter icon that I thought could be an email link. I clicked on it and got a message that the site was insecure. Hmmmm... this isn't going to be easy. Why would it be? 

After a couple hours of surfing into brick walls, I found a few emails and sent them my story. One for the SPP; one for the office of the new and current Procurator General, Zhang Jun; one for the National People's Congress of China; one for Deng Guangming who is an assistant prosecutor for international cooperation; and the Canadian chamber of commerce in China. All but the last one came back with the message that the email address doesn't exist. 

I've seen a couple stories in my web surfing about the SPP going after politicians and high profile businessmen. I get the feeling that "the people" the REAL people are just small potatoes to these anti-corruption agencies. But you never know, maybe the Chinese chamber of commerce will help me. heh heh heh. Who am I kidding? A Canadian government agency? An international Canadian government agency? I'll get more help from Ms. Zhang Wei herself.  

And as we read the article, it is revealed that the impotence of Chinese labour unions, (whose paychecks are paid by the Chinese companies they represent), will have their leaders fired if they try to force companies to abide by any decent labour laws. The US companies in China do not share the same privilege. They MUST obey the laws of their adopted labour source, I mean slave source, I mean country, thus creating marked advantage within China for Chinese companies. THAT'S why the US corporations are pissed off! They'll have to pay their workers better wages and maybe observe minimal human rights if the new labour laws are introduced. What an outrage! "I mean," say corporations like G.E., Nike, Ford, Microsoft, Dell, "why should we have to raise our workers' wages from 'starvation' all the way up to 'possible survival'?"

Small business seems to think just as little of rule of law in China. The more I find out about China, the more I understand that I was much safer working on an illegal business visa over there. Work visas won't be the way to go until companies obey the laws and there are organizations of enforcement with power enough to gain respect. And who knows when THAT might be.

I hearken back to the first time I tried to quit Huasheng. After my contract was just completely changed for the worst in every way. They actually threatened to have me removed from the country before I could sleep through the night. The second time, when I actually DID quit, they threatened to publish stories about me that would ruin my reputation. The old, "Do what I command or you'll never work in this town again," ploy. I chuckled at the time at the grade school shading being offered by two grown-ass adults:

these two con artists. But now I wonder if in a country so thoroughly mired in corruption, they mightn't have been empty threats. Gives me a little bit of a spinal chill. They don't look like much. They AREN'T much. But with an impotent system of checks and balances, corporate oversight and regulation, the very backbones of a supposedly socialist society, these two dickshits are just soldiers of capitalism run amok. They don't have a care in the world about possible consequences of their despicable business practices toward their employees OR themselves. Oh my GOD Magnum it would be sweet to fine these shitstains or put them out of business or even in jail! But I have limited faith that any of my emails are going to work.

And it seems, according to this article, that I'm about the umpteen millionth in line. Instead of supporting the workers, the virtual slogan of the Chinese Communist Party, people protesting their companies not paying the wages they are owed are being treated like criminals. People who are being ripped off by their companies are going to jail while the company owners who committed the actual crimes are not. This isn't new and it's not new to me so I really shouldn't be all that surprised at what happened on my trip to China. But now I feel like I can share in the Chinese workers' fight. With major corporations, (who are very largely responsible for China's economic boom), threatening to leave if China starts giving a shit about its workers, I don't like their chances, but fingers crossed!

So the companies can pay the slave wages because the government lets them. Then the government says it's going to change, but the companies don't listen and the government doesn't make them listen. So the workers protest and the government beats them and puts them in jail.

I hope the Chinese people win. Meanwhile, I'm not so sure I want to go back there. I'll watch from the safer climes of Saudi Arabia or Russia or some other nation needing English instruction. It'd sure be nice to find something here in Korea!

At any rate, I often feel like a broken record blathering on and on about this travesty and boring my friends to tears. Like back when I broke up with my teenage girlfriend, Kelly. I saw my friends try to support me and get me to stop droning on about it, but I didn't. Then I began seeing people cross the street if they saw me coming and pretend not to see me so as to avoid a stop-and-chat that would undoubtedly include the latest pussyaching about Kelly. I had this really sick Kelly thing! I am sure the friends I'm staying with would rather hear about anything other than my getting Shanghaied in China! And today I got a message from a Chinese friend asking how I'm doing and I started in with this new information. The friend just didn't reply. The online equivalent of saying, "I'm just going to see what's happening over there... somewhere that isn't here."

So hopefully this'll stick a fork in this blog-wise and personally. My blog is my therapy. Putting this out there might help me to let it go. I feel a bit better having millions of Chinese brothers and sisters who have been screwed by their employers too. So in my almost exclusively "at least" world, at least I've got that going for me. Which is nice.

Addendum: Shortly after finishing this I got an offer to work in Korea. I hope this works out...

The ESL Teaching Loophole

Ask a person, any person around you, who their favourite teacher is or was, and you'll probably get a well thought out response. You won't hear, "Hmmm... I don't know," or "I've never thought about that before," or a long pause for contemplation. This is because teachers are tremendously important people in our most formative times of our lives and we all have our favourites. It's something we have talked and thought about before. So go ahead and ask. I'll wait.

Now, ask them why and you'll hear words like "kind," "respectful," "intelligent," "attentive," "caring," "down-to-earth," "trusting," "trustworthy," "honest," "responsible," "organized," "cool," "nice," "friendly," "funny," "patient," a general sprinkling of love, unicorns and rainbows!

Now, find a crooked businessperson, any crooked businessperson, there should be one close at hand. Go ahead, I'll wait.

Now ask that scumbag/person the kind of client he/she prefers to screw/do business with and you will hear a familiar list of words.

My point is that the qualities that make us teachers good teachers, the qualities that make people GOOD, are the very qualities that render us vulnerable to assholes in the business of education. And it is more and more a business, don't kid yourself. This is just one article I've read that shows this trend I have been noticing and complaining about for years.

In business, good = stupid. This is a loophole people who head up "schools," or more accurately the education shops of Asia, have been exploiting for years. Take a gander at the following job ad from Korea:

Now let's go beyond the normal discrimination that is allowable by law and common practice here like asking for a recent pic, birth date, actually stating that the person must be young, or old and healthy, (eye roll), religion, skin colour........ sigh. These are just some of the usual pitfalls that come with the job of ESL teacher. OTHER jobs can be worse! I've heard from some of my former flight attendant students that there are "swimsuit" interviews and pinch tests for fat. But a "drunken nation?" I wonder what THAT list looks like.

But let's just try to gauge the character of the business from the ad. Often, the "school" forgets that the teacher might actually have other job opportunities and they could be interviewing to judge the school. They get so cocky and comfortable in this heavily business favouring society, that they are holding all the cards in the interview that they don't even try to hide the assholery! I think the above might be a good example of this.

Now, it's gotta be said that sometimes the "teachers" that come over here are not going to be described with that list we made above. Sometimes teachers do bad things to employers like pulling runners in mid contract and leaving them in the lurch. Not paying their phone or cable bills and going back to their countries. Complaining a lot about cultural differences; not making the effort to learn the language or culture; partying too much; showing up late; taking days off; using sick days; even physical and sexual abuse of the kids. Sometimes the quality of the teacher is questionable. But in general, just like anywhere else, the low quality people end up in the low quality workplaces. At the end of the ad they say this job will likely be gone soon. Act now! This offer will end soon! This message will self-destruct in 5 seconds! ha ha ha.

This could very well be the truth, but what kind of self-respecting person would even apply? You'd have to be pretty much desperate. I mean, 40,000, (well, 32,000 when you remove the "administration fee" whatever THAT might be), is a pretty big carrot. That's about 35 bucks an hour. So there may be some interest, but anyone with the qualities of a good teacher will give this a miss.

The point I want to make here though is I've worked with these people before. Not THESE specifically, but I think many an ESL school/white conversation trafficker in Asia thinks exactly like this, they just aren't, (yet), quite so bold as to put it in their ads. So the trick is to figure out from a few easily fakeable emails and maybe a little phony kindness at an interview if the people you are signing away a full year of your life to aren't the kind of people who wrote the above ad. It ain't easy! I've been trying my whole career over here.

AND let me draw your attention to the visa portion of the ad. This you may not understand, but it's yet another example of a country tilting the playing field in the favour of businesses and businesses taking full advantage of it. This is the big problem I'm having now. You know of the stupid new rule in China that has led to all this unwanted downtime here in Korea. But even since that fiasco, I've had some problems. The problems HERE in Korea are new too.

I'm from the era when we didn't need to get criminal record checks or apostilled copies of our degrees. But I adapted to it. I did those dog tricks many times. And I'm willing to do so again for a good job in the country of Korea where I'm comfortable. But things have changed. As ever, entirely unnecessarily, in favour of the businesses and to the ever-enduring annoyance of the lowly ESL worker.

Lemme give you a ferinstance: I keep on seeing ads like the above for people with F visas. An F-4 visa is one that Korea gives to an ethnic Korean born in another country. These are gold to the hagwons and language schools here. They can give their money to a Korean, (which, let's face it, they would all prefer), but a Korean who grew up speaking English so has no accent and can speak fluently. If it weren't for the Korean preference for WHITE people teaching English, there would be nothing but F-4 "gyopos," (or bananas, (yellow outside and white inside, (I'm not kidding))), or Koreans born in other countries teaching ESL here. The thing is, plenty of people born in English speaking countries are not white. It even gets so silly that people from South Africa, (even the white ones), are not seen as authentic any longer. I have a couple of friends who are as white as I am and confused immigration officers with their South African passports. "How can you be white if you're African?" Yeah, that sort of stuff.

The F-6 is another good one. It's given to a foreigner who may be from an English speaking country, but who is married to a Korean. Oh how I wish I had one! I know some folks with these and it ALMOST makes it worth marrying a Korean. In times of desperation I've considered rushing into a marriage, I dunno, finding a homeless Korean gal who would have me, just so I could get the good jobs here. But then, I've seen ads specifying, "F-series visa preferred, but NOT F-6!"

An F-5 is for a permanent resident of Korea who is not Korean. An egg, (white on the outside and yellow on the inside, (I'm not kidding)), who has pretty much become Korean. The standards are high. You have to speak fluent Korean, listen to K-pop, follow K-dramas, go to singing rooms regularly, eat corn on your pizza, etc., etc.,... Like I said, the standards are high. But THESE guys are the perfect ESL teachers! It's what every Korean ESL school hopes for! And the "schools" are getting so spoiled here, it's what they all expect. So they wait until the very last minute and if they haven't found one, they'll settle for something else. I'll explain later how this screws the rest of us ESL job hunters in Korea.

The E-2 is the usual work visa for a foreigner like me who comes to Korea ready to teach ESL. You need to get a verified criminal record check and copy of your university degree stamped, (apostilled), at a Korean embassy in your country. This was something added in 2010. And if you read my blog from back then you'll learn how big a shit-show it caused here. But since then a couple of new additions to these documents have been added. Now the criminal record check is only good for 6 months. This is nothing but a money grab by somebody because, as explained on my blog before, if you haven't been in your country, you could not have committed a crime there. Korean ESL jobs are almost exclusively one-year contracts, but even though you are finishing a contract and getting a new job without returning to your country, and haven't set foot in it for the entire year, you still have to get one.

There are a few ways to get these documents. One could return to his/her country and do the paperwork there. One could ask someone else to do it for him/her. Or one could get the dox from one of many increasingly expensive document services who do such things. I found a service that was able to get my dox finished and mailed to me in two weeks. This is the fastest I've heard of. And this is where the F-5ers are killing us. You see, ESL "schools" are notorious for doing everything at the last second. They don't want to wait two weeks for a new employee, they want everybody to service them right away without the need for any foresight whatsoever. So now what you have are people asking for workers with F visas OR people who already have the E-2 visa.

How the hell might this work? one might ask. I certainly have been asking for a while! You see, in order to get an E-2 visa, a company needs to sponsor you. That is, a company needs to offer you a job and sign a contract with you. That's the way it's always been and that's the way it still is as far as I have been told. So I had thought it must be for people who are finishing their contracts and want to look for a new job. The paperwork is easier and it saves the company the cost of an oversees flight since the teacher is already here. But since the visas always expire a month or less after the contract expires, it's still a very tight window. Especially if you're applying for one of these jobs that needs a teacher right away. So I don't think that's the case very often.

I have been refused interviews because I didn't already have my E-2 visa. I actually talked to a recruiter here and said that I will get my E-2 after the interview and after I've received a contract. It's the way everybody has to do it, isn't it? The recruiter said, "No sir! No sir! No sir! The teachers should apply for the documents before being interviewed." I said, "Don't then need a sponsor?" "No sir! Not any more." So THEN I asked why one would do this even if one could since if you don't find a job within 6 months, the criminal record check will have expired. The answer was something like, "Well, it's how it's done now." So this got me curious. I searched all over for an organization who could give me some knowledgeable advice on this. It seemed at the very least like Korea was taking advantage of teachers and Canadian document services.

Well you KNOW I found nothing. But I was referred to a Facebook site that informed me that there still must be a sponsor. But I see ads for E-2 workers for two-month long summer camps. I have actually done these too. This IS possible if the sponsor gives permission. But full time, 8-hour-a-day jobs who won't interview you unless you already have the visa documents? This seemed strange. So I asked in that Facebook group if I could get an E-2 visa without a sponsor. The answer was no. And there are absolutely no short-term visas for if a person wanted to work less than a year, at a seasonal camp or something like that even though there are plenty of such short term jobs available. I still don't know the answer but I'm convinced there's something fishy going on here.

At any rate, I applied for a job at Dongseo University and spent over 100,000 won going to an interview in Busan. It went well and I was told by someone in the know that I actually GOT the frigging job... BUT... HR pulled the funding before I could be hired. What the hell is THIS now, Korea? Interviewing people JUST IN CASE?

And the recruiters! These guys didn't exist before. Now it's almost a must to deal with these superfluous entities when job hunting here. I applied for a really good job at Korea Electric Power Company, KEPCO, and had an interview set up and cancelled at the last minute... TWICE! Recruiters are not well known for doing a good job. They're lazy and undependable, but for a business who doesn't want to deal directly with the English teacher, i.e. speak English to them, these recruiters have become the way to go. And they're yet another burden for us ESL job hunters to bear.

SOOOO after many setbacks, at this time I am waiting for an online interview with a company in Saudi Arabia, or a job offer from ANOTHER electric company, Korea Hydro Nuclear Power, for a contract. I think I'll go with whichever of those two is faster. The three really good jobs waiting for me in September will have to be abandoned. I can't wait that long hoping to get some part-time work to tide me over here. It used to be really easy to get stuff like that under the table in Korea but even THAT has gone the way of tiny phones and Dance Dance Revolution here. It had its day, but is now gone.

I'm hoping to stay in Korea but I think the visa papers might cause some concern. As for Saudi, I think I will hate it going 5 1/2 months without bacon, beer or cool weather, but a guy's gotta do what a guy's gotta do. Especially a lowly ESL teacher guy.

So now, maybe that ad will make a bit more sense to you. We are just a step above slime here. Not a single person on OINK, (only in Korea), the website where I saw the above ad, seemed surprised in the least at the sentiments expressed in it. Only a few expressed mild surprise that someone would post it.

And yet I keep looking for a place where teachers, REAL teachers, whose career trajectories are reliant upon the virtues in the list compiled above, are treated with the respect befitting someone better than slime. But it's a loophole I doubt will ever be filled. We're nice, so we're taken advantage of. I wonder who will take advantage of me next...

Easter Movies

That title may be a little bit misleading. The movies I'll be mentioning will not be Easter movies in the traditional sense of those words. But then untraditional is the kind of fella I am. The movies mentioned are going to be movies I've either watched recently or been reminded of during this week when we celebrate the Lord rising from the dead. Rising from the dead will be a theme here. Watch for it.

Like the movie "Coco" I recently watched. Twice. It's a cool movie. The animation was out of this world! The story was predictably Disney but I liked the Mexican spin. I like Mariachi guitar music a lot. The day after I watched it for the first time everybody in my dreams had Spanish accents. Miguel sort of rose from the dead in that movie. Sort of. He visited the dead then came back to the living. The part of that movie that stuck with me was the part about the people fading away into, what?, second death? when they are forgotten. And I thought to myself, "Self, I haven't even died yet and I've been forgotten by a lot of people."

So what, I wondered, could I do to make myself more memorable? I am pretty darn good at blogging so I thought I'd make this my "Remember Me" blog. You'll get that if you watch "Coco." Really, watch it, it's great!

Movie number one: "A Few Good Men." I remember back in the 80's when I first watched that movie kinda feeling a little bit on Jack Nicholson's side. Colonel Jessup. We all know the famous speech. "You can't handle the truth!" But a couple of the things he says after that part are the things that I got thinking about recently. "I have a greater responsibility that you can possibly fathom!" and "All you did today is weaken a nation. That's all you did." I remember thinking the whole conversation between Dawson and Downey about why they were found innocent but still not allowed back into the military. "What did we do wrong? We didn't do anything wrong!" Dawson said. "Yeah we did. We were supposed to fight for the people who couldn't fight for themselves. We were supposed to fight for Willy." Then with the whole salute to Dan Kaffee, (Tom Cruise), as he leaves the room, it almost overhollywooded it to the point of the red nose scene in Patch Adams or the Captain my Captain scene standing on the desks in Dead Poet's Society. But let's concentrate on the not so melodramatic parts of the movie.

I have a great deal of respect for training. And I can relate to how the military can find it useful to have soldiers act without thinking sometimes. I don't know much about the military from experience, but in sports I have learned to stickhandle a puck or ball without looking at it over many hours of hockey playing. In baseball, I can pull an inside pitch or go with an outside pitch even though the ball is coming far too fast to think about doing that. They call it muscle memory in sport. You can't think, you just have to repeat it so many times that it becomes instinctive.

I suppose for the military's purposes, a perfect soldier would be the one who doesn't think, just does. I love the scene in Forrest Gump when he puts the gun together really fast and the sergeant asks why he did it so well and Gump says, "Because you told me to, SERGEANT!" The sergeant is highly impressed and says that Gump might someday become a general if he keeps acting without thinking.

This was not exactly the most accurate statement. The generals are the ones who actually ARE supposed to be doing the thinking. Other officers like Jessup too. And if they give an order, since they are the ones who EARNED the right to do the thinking, the order is NEVER to be questioned. This is the way the military operates. Pretty much all militaries. Is it just me, just my life experience, or is there anyone else out there who thinks this might be giving a far too juicy bone to some dogs and expecting them not to eat it?

I'll give you launch codes and military strategies. You can have secrecy for those since the power to blow the world up about 100 times over really IS a huge responsibility. A self-created responsibility, but a great one nonetheless. So you can have your secrecy and your place above any questioning for those. But when people start abusing this untouchability and they start committing human rights violations like waterboarding, giving "code reds," or other torture; when they start committing moral offenses like tapping phone lines or tracking internet usage; when they start committing crimes like killing innocent people, and expecting them to be covered "under the very blanket" of secrecy that covers things that it makes sense to cover, then, NO, SIR, Colonel Jessup, it's not weakening a country to expose that behavior. It's strengthening it. Furthermore, yours is not a greater responsibility than we can all possibly fathom. We all, and I'm talking about every other human being, have a greater responsibility!

What about a contract? What if you want something you can only really get one place and sign a contract? Like we all did without reading it when we signed up for Facebook. Is it okay for them to say, "Well in the contract, it said you willingly surrender your first born child to Mark Zuckerberg." What if you sign a contract that has a non-disclosure clause in it? THEN is it right for you to tell somebody about things that are just wrong being done at your workplace? This is when WE, the regular people have a responsibility that supersedes or contracts or our jobs or even Colonel Jessup's orders. We have a responsibility to mankind. To the human race. This is one of those deteriorating values and ideals I've been blogging about. Why do you suppose it's deteriorating? Why does it sound corny to even say we all have a responsibility to each other? It shouldn't, but it does.

I believe no order should ever be given, no secrecy agreement should ever be signed, no contract should ever be legally binding without two words, and if these two words are not present, I believe, as the spirit of our law at one time also upheld, that these two words should be implicit. These words are, "within reason." THIS is the responsibility that human beings and only human beings have been trusted with. REASON. And it is a great power we have over all other species. As Spiderman knows, with great power comes great responsibility.

This is one of the best movie scenes ever. It's funny, but nowadays it's also very serious.

 It's from Billy Madison. The movie is a comedy, but sometimes comedians are the people who make us think the most. Doing something good like this has a way of multiplying. In fact, there are those who believe that every good deed has a butterfly effect that reaches everybody directly or indirectly. EVERYBODY! The same is believed for selfish deeds. It's not very hard to imagine. Let's say, for instance, that this guy doesn't kill Billy Madison. Billy doesn't have to go on to cure Cancer to affect the entire human race. He could do unbelievably simple things for other human beings that lead to others and others and others and soon just one act of kindness can blossom into a good deed for 7 billion people! Say they really DO meet for coffee. Then they become friends. Then this guy sees that people can change and doesn't kill the others on his list. Now every good thing those other people do for the rest of their lives to thousands of other people would not have happened if not for this one phone call. They didn't know it, but they were dead. Imagine now that they find out how close they came to death. They are now, (kinda), back from the dead. How GOOD would these people be knowing that every single new day is a gift? Raymond K. Hessel knows.

Remember this scene in Fight Club when Tyler Durdan holds a gun to Raymond K. Hessel's head? I sometimes wish somebody could hold a gun to everybody's head every day. THEN we'd be able to let that which truly does not matter slide. Then we'd all be better people too. And as shitty as the world is now? That's how awesome it would be!

Do you see how the butterfly effect works here? But it works the very same for bad deeds. THIS is a far greater responsibility than any other. And it's being forgotten about. More accurately, it's one of those super important things in all of our lives that we are being distracted from. Strategically distracted.

But who is distracting us from cultivating our collective powers and unleashing our whole person? This is what Leonardo da Vinci reckoned we should all be busying ourselves with. But we're not. WHY not? Because we're too busy and burdened with rules and "musts" that we retreat into our hibernative lives of antisociality. The height of absurdity is that the "social" network, the internet, has become the main substitute for human connection that has lead to this collective social stuntedness.

We all know that playing a game of Minecraft or Call of Duty with strangers, is not the same as going bowling on Wednesday nights. Online friends are ghosts. We are perfectly safe to just barely acknowledge their humanity, and treat them in ways that differ from our social interaction with REAL people. That's why it's called "virtual" reality, not real reality.

The problem I see arising is as people spend more and more time with ghost friends, our social habits, our online quasi-politeness, transfers into the real world. This indefatigably chips away at common sense, common courtesy and the common good. We used to worry about this happening with people who watch too much TV. Internet and phone mentoring are worse. I say that with the inference that media is a strong mentor. TV shaped the way people acted and thought. But the internet and phone interconnectivity are even more powerful in making us good or bad people.

How ironic is that? Real people are taking a back seat to ghost people in developing human beings socially. But this is why one of the most important issue of our lifetimes is happening right now to little or no fanfare. The deterioration of "net neutrality" will take away our chance of using this massive power for good and turn it into a massive power for bad. It has already begun and it's our responsibility to reverse the trends toward the internet being monopolized by the greedy and corrupt. But the greedy and corrupt don't want us to concentrate on that. So they strategically distract us with the meaningless.

In Barack Obama's recent interview on David Letterman's new show he says, "One of the biggest challenges to our democracy is that we don't share a common baseline of facts." He goes on to say that three different people could Google the word "Egypt" and come up with three completely different sets of facts according to the information that has been collected about them. The information we receive on the internet is increasingly being sold and not told to us. This creates divergent information about similar topics that will keep us arguing. The disparate findings on almost anything will have us fighting over politics, world events, the environment, science, religion, if toilet paper should go over or under and it divides instead of uniting. It blunts the possibility of a more united world.

This is the issue with the Zuckerberg hearings to my understanding. Yes, we all "agreed" to the contract so we could play Words With Friends with our friends, but does that give Zuckerberg the right to do whatever he wants? Shouldn't it say, even in the Zuckerberg contract, WITHIN REASON? I mean, what if some stupid moron Messengers launch codes to someone else. ACCURATE launch codes! Does Zuckerberg have the right to sell them to the highest bidder? Then we'd have people hacking into computers and launching American nukes. Does anybody think that's okay because, hey, somebody signed a contract. You can write a thousand dollar bonus into a contract like the one for Facebook and nobody will collect it. It's been proven. But because of this contract we all signed without reading, Google, Facebook and other sites will direct me to a whole different set of facts than somebody else. I want ALL the facts, not just the ones some algorithms have decided I should be fed. So how do we regulate all this? By using the common sense and reason that only we possess.

Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure is being remade! 

The original Bill & Ted might have the best line in a movie ever. "Be excellent to each other!" I bet it's no coincidence that George Carlin was in it. I wonder if it was George, the central figure in my personal comedian Mt. Rushmore, that inspired that philosophical gem. This line is the bottom line, folks! And we're just not being excellent to each other. If we were more excellent to each other, there'd be no thought put into coming to the aid of those who can't help themselves. It would be our responsibility and it would be understood. We wouldn't need it to be forced into us at gunpoint like Raymond K. Hessel. If we were all excellent to each other on a daily basis, we'd be reminded on a daily basis of how important and self-perpetualizing it can be.

But I can hear people now saying, "Yeah and if we ever got to that point, SOMEBODY would take advantage of all the love and kindness, exploit people and get rich off it." Well, that is what has happened, isn't it? It's what we are reminded of on a daily basis and what is self-perpetualizing. It's what has driven us into our defensive, protective, untrusting, competitive, secretive, basically paranoid states of mind and what has got us into this mess we're in right now.

So the solution is very simple: we use our reason to find those people who will take advantage of other people's kindness for selfish reasons and eliminate them from society. Jails are everywhere but these people are not in them. These people are running industry, banks and politics. The selfishness that is ruining the world has become a virtue. That is what we need to change.

Leastaways, that's what I reckon.

Post script: I'm looking forward to reading "The Common Good" by Robert Reich because I think he might reckon so too.