Semester-end Report

 I am up at 4 AM watching the first game of the NHL semi-finals. This means there are only 4 teams remaining. These days with Covid still hanging on and a job that requires me to be in the office 9 hours a day warming the seat of my desk chair for most of that time, I thank the good Lord for hockey! I've watched a good deal of the games and I've watched a lot of them while at "work." Now, to fairly describe my current working situation, if I WERE working all nine hours of every day, I'd be getting paid an hourly wage that is less than minimum wage. But calculating in two months of vacation, it's a bit more than minimum wage. $15.33 an hour. And if you consider I don't even teach for over half of my time at work, I am making over 30 bucks per hour of work. But I consider time at work to be worth something too. I'm a visible presence. I'm here if needed, even if that's rarely or never. I deter prospective trespassing, vandalism and theft, even if that's rare or never happens. I've worked security and I know the value of just sitting or standing in a place so people can see you. It's minimum wage, THAT'S the value of it! At least it was for all the scumbag security companies I worked for in Canada. So I should be paid the 30 bucks an hour, which I'm worth, for my hours of teaching and 15 bucks an hour for the other hours I'm here. Or I should just not BE here when I'm not teaching. Hell even when I AM teaching. 

Around about the year 2002, so like almost 20 years ago, I was making 50 bucks an hour. When I worked for SKhynix, I was told by some of the execs I taught how much they were paying for an hour of classes with me. It was more like 75 bucks an hour. So I'm worth MORE than the 30 an hour I'm currently pulling in, but I'm fine with that. So long as I don't have to do security work voluntarily. I'll eventually convince them of this. I don't think it'll be a problem to go home when I'm not needed and get it written in my contract by the end of my first 11 months here. It's just gonna be shitty getting through all this wasted, salary-sapping time. However, if they smarten up and give me a normal contract the second time around, it'll be okay. 

So as you read this, I don't want you to think of it as a complaint. I'm happy with the job. Very happy! I liked all of my students and I like most of the international students I am associating with. I got some really nice comments from my students saying they enjoyed my class and I sincerely hope they feel their English got better either taking my classes via Zoom or face-to-face in my office. I left a little early for lunch or at the end of the day a few times, but I can honestly say I was there the whole semester, all nine hours of my work day every day. 

But if you recall, I didn't start at the beginning of the semester. I started a month late (Apr. 1 instead of Mar. 1). I suspected this would cause problems and it did. Housing was the first of the difficulties. I had little to choose from and the place I ended up in, even though it was the far superior choice of the places I looked at, is a rip-off. It isn't as big, new, or nice in any way as my previous apartment. And my previous apartment was in a bigger city. I've had to spend quite a bit of money to make it as comfortable as I could replacing fixtures and buying furniture and tomorrow, (rather, today) my bed will be delivered at around 3 in the afternoon. I'll need to pay some cash on delivery, so it's not the sort of thing the deliverers will be able to just leave outside my door. 

The second problem I foresaw was with severance pay. When I first met my supervisor, Pyunghwa, I asked about it. You see, over my years of working here in Korea, I've learned a lot of the laws the employers like to take advantage of here. As I have said many times before, they all do it to make themselves feel like savvy business-folk, and if you're here long enough, you learn to accept it and prepare for it since you will still have a decent deal even after their cheap chicanery. And if they can stroke their business egos on your dime, instead of your dollar, it ain't so bad. So even though I asked Pyunghwa at contract signing time if I'd get my full severance pay (one month's salary) at the end of my 11-month contract even though the law says you give it after 12 months of work, she assured me I'd be paid, but not in writing and not in a way that was very convincing. On Friday she pointed out that I won't be getting my severance pay at the end of my 11th month of work here. Not a huge surprise.

In that same meeting, I was told a few other things. One is that my office will be changing soon to a building much farther from my apartment. The commute will have 5 or 10 extra minutes added to it, but this is not my immediate concern. I've been told that the whole international program will be moved and the only people who have visited my current office are the members of the department that will be taking it over when the change is made. You know, scoping out the offices and mentally arranging desks, lamps, fans etc. I haven't been able to investigate what will be my new office. This is my concern.

At present, I'm all alone. And I love that! Nobody has come into my office except the aforementioned scopers, and the helper I have every day. That's been either Aminur, Thoa, or Achilles. Why do I have a helper even though I don't even have enough to keep myself busy? They are from Bangladesh, Vietnam and China respectively, but they all speak Korean. That has been their help to this point. And I've been able to do a few things with their help. I got a health check done with Aminur's help. Turned out to be a useless waste of money and time, but... I also have been able to join the ranks of the online shopper here in Korea. This has burnt more than a few hours of my ample spare time at work, and it was how I purchased my bed actually. I have tried and been frustrated a few times to do online shopping here in Korea because you can get some things online that are really hard to find otherwise. It took hours and hours and multiple attempts, but Thoa helped me get signed up on Coupang and Gmarket. Without her Korean abilities, I wouldn't have been able to do it. 

For example, Friday night I visited Rob and Meagan and told them the news I'm sharing here over burgers, beers and salt and vinegar kettle chips. I brought the chips, which I'd bought on Coupang. They were much appreciated too! That made me happy. Rob teaches at Gongju and Meagan teaches IN Gongju too. This is how I know I am the only teacher at Gongju University being forced to go into class at all. Rob teaches completely from home and online. I did that all last year when I was at Gongju in Cheonan too. With the international program, I am expected to make myself available to the students in case they want to ask about anything they might be having trouble with, or just talk to someone in English. I had 4 hours of office time a week that was euphemistically written down as "International Student Counselling" on my schedule. As I said, NObody came in. Nobody.

Now with the semester over, the building I'm in will be locked. Some of the international students have been given phone scan cards to get into the sliding door to the building, but they don't work. Till the end of last week, there was a swinging door that was left open, so that didn't matter. But then the swinging door was also locked. What a glorious example of "mo technology - mo problems" THAT was! The doors were locked at 5 after the other side of the international offices, the students, had cleared out. THEY get to go home at 5. But I was still there. Even my helper was gone. Then when I tried to go home, I couldn't get out of the building. I shit thee not, I was locked into the building. I knew they wanted me to stay in the office for whatever antiquated reason, but this was ridiculous! Pyunghwa had promised, Monday, to give me a card for the sliding door. She sent a helper over with the card. Luckily, it worked. Before I left that night, this was Thursday, I had to let a few other stranded people out of the building when their phone cards didn't work. Then Friday morning I had to let some folks in and, believe it or not, Friday after lunch, I had to let some people out. I guess they'd been stranded there for the entire lunch hour. Hilarious!

Anyway, since Pyunghwas is no longer my supervisor, I don't really have contact information for the new girl, I don't have any classes to teach, and I have a delivery to receive at 3:00 tomorrow, I'm planning on being at my apartment at 3. Since there is nobody from the international department in my building, I doubt this will be noticed. However, when we move the international department to the new building, I'm not so sure I'll be able to get away with such subterfuge. 

I am also planning on bringing pants and dress shirt to work with me for the next three weeks, but don't intend to change into them unless necessary. And I can't imagine a scenario in which they might be necessary. I'll be wearing shorts and tee-shirt. This too I might not be able to pull off at the new building. So this is my concern.

My one duty for the next three weeks is to write a curriculum for July. A four-week teacher training curriculum. I'll be teaching English to some of the profs here. I've heard some of them have really bad English, but I usually enjoy teaching teachers, and I actually prefer low levels, so I'm happy to do this. What I'm not so happy about is, you guessed it, the other teachers will have this time off. Vacation. And if you ever want to see an example of a bogus, time-waster of a schedule, get a load of this:

Yup. That's my sched. Class every day at 10. Then four hours of pud pulling followed by a class at 2. A three-hour afternoon session of canine coitus, then a class at 6 PM. Friday is different because nobody, except me, will be doing anything but starting the weekend after 4 PM. I'll likely have to stay three more hours jackin' my joint until I start my weekend at 7 on Friday night. 

Again, to whinge about monetary compensation or the work would be ungrateful. Especially in these times when the ESL industry is toughening up. I'm betting it won't be long till a masters will be required for any university position here, so I should count my blessings. Also, I get all of August off. And January, I'm told. And in other mitigating news, Pyunghwa told me that if I stay another year, I will be able to collect severance on the entire 23 months I will have worked by the end of my second contract. Of course I'll be getting that written INTO my second contract. I'm also hoping to impress upon management the idea of allowing me to go home when there is absolutely no use for me. Not sure if I will get that written in the contract, or if I'll be able to swing an agreement with someone at contract time. But any such agreement will be tough to make if I'm in the same office as the old fashioned, Korean dinosaurs who are trying their best to maintain the traditionally inefficient 9 hour day with 2/3 of that day wasted and only 1/3 of it doing anything productive. 

Last year I had a lot more problems and I was able to say, "But not to worry, two months vacation coming up." This year I have fewer problems and am able to say, "Not to worry, a month of vacation coming up." I don't have to jack around with the online portal or LMS gymnastics. I don't have to give grades or listen to students crying the blues about the "low" grades they received. These I may exchange for a month less vacation if given the choice. So again, counting my blessings right about now. But July is gonna be a bit hard to take. Especially with the hot, humid, sticky walks to work that I know none of the other teachers are being forced to make. 

Well, it's 6:40 AM. Islanders win game one 2-1! I like the Islanders better than the Lightning so I'm happy. I'm glad I got up to watch. And since I have nothing I really need to do at work today, I'll be fine with the sleep deprivation. Also, it'll be nice to have my own bed upon which to recover from it tonight. I'm still happy to be working so I can buy nice things like beds too. Aside from frustrations with Korean ways of doing things like the desk warming and the exhaustively repetitive online form filling, text answering and even phone calls I have to deal with - I had a delivery guy who was looking at my package that had on it my name, address, email, alien card #, passport #, personal customs code, preferred underwear brand... and phone number, send me an SMS on my phone asking for my name, address, email, alien card #, etc., etc., etc... - but other than those minor stressors I'm sweating, but I know I shouldn't be, life is pretty good here. I really shouldn't say things like that, should I?

A Little Backpedaling

... and the day after I self-sabotage, I usually find articles like this one, or this one, that I use as a sober backpedaling, hangoverish, apologetic plea to the folks who have just blocked me or determined not to listen to me any more. So many things in the world are highly complicated! The Covid 19 thing is just one of them.

I wasn't the only one who had doubts about such a seemingly impossibly fast transition from discovering a new virus to jabbing people with a vaccine that was being called completely safe and fully tested. The previous record, as both articles above state, had been 4 years. We got the Covid 19 vax in eight months! What the hell, bro?!?!

It turns out that the above articles are what the hell, bro. While it is hard information not to doubt when you consider things like this, it IS better than, "Just get your jab, stupid." Still, in a culture where we've been socialized to "just say no" to some drugs, we're now being told to trust an industry that is not to be trusted and just say yes to its seemingly fast-tracked (and as pointed out before, highly profitable) vaccines. And as if this isn't already confusing enough - I shit thee not - joints for jabs. 

A year and a half after I first heard about Covid 19, back when it was being called the Wuhan Flu, member?, ten months after the release of the lightning fast vaccine, I am just now hearing about why it was so lightning fast. This odd confluence of events makes me wonder why the news wasn't available earlier. But maybe it was. Maybe another phenomenon is coming into play here. One I admit to, and I think if we're honest (which we aren't) we could ALL admit to, 

Here is a great article that a friend posted on Facebook that I, being within my weekly limit of free New Yorker browsing, was able to read. The remarkable lengths and breadths of human reason may be more about winning arguments than the thirsts for knowledge and human advancement, it turns out. And "once formed, impressions are remarkably perseverant." Even when presented with facts which prove us wrong, it seems to be in our nature to cling at least a little bit longer to cherished beliefs. Some of us cling longer than others. Some never let them go. This has been termed "confirmation bias." In the above example, I presented myself with the explanations of how the Covid 19 vaccine had materialized so mysteriously fast, which was that in actuality, it hadn't. It was possible to use data from studies on previous corona viruses, some which had taken years to compile, to sort of reshape the virus and make it easier to combat. I have little understanding of how the mRNA encodes a key protein of the Covid 19 virus and causes our bodies to produce the protein that acts as an antigen. It's all Greek to me. But evidently it works! The vaccines have been a huge success! So why do I then start hemming and hawing about how it took so long for this information to be released? That'd be yer confirmation bias methinks. I'm still clinging to my cherished premise in the argument to defend the doubters of the vaccines, the postulation that these vaccines were rushed. Which is wrong. But I still like. Because of how serviceable, even in its wrongness, the use of this gem had been in past writing, and, yes, arguing for me. 

Confirmation bias. That's a useful way of summarizing how sometimes when we realize we've lost the point, we carry on hoping to still win the argument. Occasionally we're all like lawyers who continue to jealously defend our clients even after they have informed us they're guilty as sin without an ounce of remorse. A lawyer's reputation, and that of his/her firm, could sustain damage due to a guilty verdict, so even though it's the right one, the lawyer fights for what is wrong. Honestly, can you say you've never found yourself doing that? What are we thinking in these moments? Are we thinking of our careers as arguers? Are we worried our win/loss stats can't take the hit? Somehow our status will be diminished and we will lose our reputations as formidable foes in conversational disagreement? Just who do we think we are?

Well, according to that New Yorker article, because of the "myside bias," we DON'T think about who we think we are. We're too busy poking holes in other people's arguments (and adept through practice at doing so) to be able to poke holes in, or even see, the holes in our own. And with readily accessible heaps of information, real and fake, on the internet, twitter, TV, Youtube, etc., etc., it has become so much easier to maintain false perceptions of "rightness" and bolster them with legitimate sounding fiction, and attack opponents' arguments with false perceptions of "wrongness" bolstered by that same legitimate sounding fiction! We can, in a word, find plausible support for any dumb arguments we'd like to cling to. In a society with constantly increasing population that will inevitably lead to necessities like coping skills, conflict resolution, compromise, cooperation and problem solving, our evolution seems to be swift - but in the wrong direction. It's likely to be our undoing. This has been known for some time. 

I chose the above quote carefully knowing, as few would dare think, that Carl Sagan is most likely speaking from experience. 

Not only is the vast amount of information available to us that can support our biases, but there are no shortages of fraudsters, foxes and fiends out there who will exploit our biases and beliefs for their own gain. Life ain't no picnic folks! We've gotta keep our heads on swivels and our sticks on the ice. Take this article for example. It's about something called "affinity fraud." People who find something you have a liking or sympathy for, and through similar affinity (sometimes they even believe it's genuine!) they gain your confidence and abuse it. Ephren Taylor is an example given in the above article. He used a con I have particular distaste for, the "gospel of prosperity," you know, "God wants you to be rich," to fleece similar believers out of about 16 million dollars in the US. 

"Investing wisely is a Biblical principle. God wants us to be prosperous and help further the Kingdom." That's essentially what Anita Dorito (or whatever) said even after her and her husband lost 1.3 million bucks to Ephren Taylor's Ponzi scheme. When religious believers crash hard after trying to insinuate human greed into the teachings of Jesus and refusing to acknowledge the gaping holes in the philosophy, they tend to just blame it on the Devil. The Dorios might have even forgiven Ephren Taylor, who knows? It'd probably be easier than admitting THEY had anything to do with what happened to them, and/or are a perfect object lesson for the hardships wealth can bring and why one shouldn't obsess about building up riches or getting too attached to property here on earth, but, through good deeds, should store up gold in heaven. But, whatever. Most would rather hear it from Yoda than Jesus.

I know of a guy closer to home who is an example on a whole other scale! A guy named Hwang Sung Gook. A Korean dude. Ever hoid of him? Probably not. How about Bill Hwang? Archegos? Well, settle in for a tale of woe for a Tiger Cub who probably lost more money, and lost it faster than anyone. Probably ever. Estimates range anywhere from 20 to 100 Billion, most or all of that in TWO DAYS! Intrigued? What if I tell you he is a devout Christian who believes he was using capitalism to do God's good work raising all that money in highly questionable ways? And what if I tell you he plead guilty to insider trading of Chinese bank stocks in 2012, was fined 44 million and was banned from trading in Hong Kong for 4 years? 

I don't know how many times I've said that a guy could make millions in Korea as an evangelist. The Korean idea of Christianity includes some of the most highly motivated people you will ever see and an adherence to the gospel of prosperity that makes the whole flock of them seem like a giant cartel to me. But OH the riches to be made from those sheep! If I were an amoral, capitalist Korean, I would have jumped on that. But I'm not, and it turns out I was wrong. There weren't millions to be made, there were BILLIONS.

Bill Hwang moved from Korea to the US when he was of McDonald's working age. The story goes, he took a job there to improve his English. I don't know if it was flipping burgers that improved his English or the prospect of becoming filthy rich in the world of stocks, hedge funds and derivatives, but he speaks English like a native now. His dad died and he and his mother moved to California where he worked as a salesman for Hyundai Securities till he was 33. He caught the eye of Julian Robertson and was recruited into his Tiger Management firm, which instantly made him. Hwang introduced Robertson to the Korean markets and Tiger bought a huge stake in SK Telecom among other Asian stocks. Hwang became known for investing "deep" and dangerous, but being successful at it. Almost as if God were on his side. He got annual returns of around 40%, which is HUGE! Who wouldn't invest with a guy who could get you 40% return on your investment?

Things were going gangbusters for Hwang until 2007 when he bet big against Volkswagen. Porsche bought lots of VW stock and its value soared 348% in 2 days. That absolutely killed investors who had "shorted" it! This mistake caused Tiger Asia to end its year DOWN 23%. Then in 2012, the insider trading with Hong Kong hedge funds sort of forced Hwang out of Tiger and into a new venture on his own. This would be Archegos. His ban from HK meant he was shut out of the hedge fund market, so he opened what is called a "family office." In this capacity, he mostly dealt with his own money, colleagues from his days in Tiger and friends (and possibly even family) all of whom shared his zeal for God, capitalism and the Church. 

The SEC doesn't make "family offices" disclose holdings, so it's a more private way of investing. Family offices are also exempt from Dodd/Frank regulation that resulted from the 2008 meltdown. While nobody was really watching him, Hwang bought "total return swaps" through Archegos. These are derivatives that give investors exposure to losses and gains with the anonymity of doing it under the banks' names. And even though all Archegos' investments were in banks' names, the various banks were unable to trace other investments by Archegos since they were undisclosed. None of the banks knew how much Hwang was borrowing from other banks. This allowed him to "leverage" his loans to the hilt! Instead of investing something normal like 20-50% of money borrowed, Hwang leveraged 5 fold or even higher. In other words, he bought 5 times the stocks than the amount of money he had borrowed. Oh, I forgot to mention this: because he was such a nice guy, banks and the stock market just allowed him to do this! He took advantage of the confidence of the banks, the markets and Archegos' customers. 

Because nobody really knows, it's estimated that Archegos started with about 200 million and got investments of about 30 billion, which was used to buy about 100 billion in stock. Or something like that. Then the banks noticed. It was something to do with Viacom making a business decision that lost them money and needing to pay stock holders for shares they were selling because of it. They asked for payment and because everything was bought on credit, Archegos defaulted. Big time. Then other stocks followed suit in domino effect. NOW the banks knew what Bill Hwang had been doing. But they couldn't dump their faulty loans onto other banks because they had the same faulty loans. It wasn't long before the banks started eating each other alive trying to be the ones to lose the least. The banks were Credit Suisse, Nomura (Japan), Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and UBS (another Swiss bank). Some of the stocks he invested in were Viacom CBS, Baidu, VIPShop, Farfetch, and Discovery Inc.

He was the son of a church pastor. He was a hugely successful investor with a Wall Street giant. He donated to a lot of Christian and Korean causes. People found a lot of "affinity" with him, and he totally used that against them. He is a greedy shadow trader and a lot of people are calling for changes in investment transparency laws because of him. In these days when private citizens, not countries, are flying into space, private citizens, not banks, are crashing stock markets, I'd say that might be a good idea, no? At any rate, even though he probably should be in prison, even though the financial damage he caused was exponentially greater than Ephren Taylor's, even though he was spanked harder than anyone in history by Mammon, the god of money, do you think he'll question his Christian capitalism? I don't either.

Archegos means one who leads the way" and it was used to describe Jesus as a leader of lives. This is probably why that name was chosen for Hwang's firm. However, he will likely be known as a leader in the category of the most epic stock market loser ever. There are few holes even his biggest fans could find in that argument. Yet, could he be convinced of that?

I wish I could tell you what has happened with Bill Hwang since March of this year, but I can't find anything. He's dropped off the face of the internet. Wisely so since about a million investors in the companies he single-handedly devalued would probably like to hasten his ultimate meeting with the God he loves so much. 

At any rate, and at long last, my point here today was not to be like people with confirmation bias or myside bias or one of Sagan's bamboozled, or especially not take advantage of any affinities we might share to mislead you. I printed that I thought the vaccines were rushed. I now know they weren't. So this is my backpedaling. I'd prefer to think of it as a retraction although the readership of this publication hardly qualifies it as one, so it may be inaccurate to use that term. That will be all.

My Self-sabotagery

 I feel that a brief invocation of the muse called Arrogance may serve me in good stead here. Oh we're familiar. With age we have become more so. I find increasingly often that knowing literary devices and strategies, human nature and the difference between valid syllogisms and spurious arguments with faulty or missing premises, is not satisfying enough when Arrogance is your muse. And I find this muse to be more easily invoked in tandem with another of my inspirations - alcohol. 

I've developed a kind of grumpy, old mannerism of a Friday or Saturday night during which I go online and poke holes in people's annoyingly happy logic, be they friend, family or complete stranger. I've never been one to gain pleasure in others' discomfort. I never felt compelled to join into teasing of peers who were different in some way, having been the victim of such childhood cruelty myself. I've always hated waking people up preferring to allow them to remain in the safety of slumber as long as possible. But as I grow older and closer to (but not yet fully acquainted with) that ultimate of muses, Wisdom, I have found the advent of strength, or at least the lack of patience, to overcome my kindness and shake people awake.

Reality is tough. It's cruel. The young and the foolish build their defenses against these truths for half a life only to spend another half dismantling them. And if we're all honest (which we're not) we can admit to contributing more than a brick or plank or length of rebar to the construction of youthful palisades in the guise of kindness and protection only to render the construction more solid and difficult to demolish. Is it kindness or protective to tell youngsters to save their money in banks so they can be rich and successful, or that honesty is the best policy in a world in which rich and "successful" people get that way through fraud? 

When those children get credit cards and shop online with them they'll find unexplained charges being deducted regularly, charges the bankers tell them cannot be blocked according to their co-conspiratorial policies. They'll find eventually that they're coming from a website where they shopped for Christmas gifts, or a campaign donation page for a candidate who promised to root out corruption, websites that contained, carefully hidden in jargon and sententious small print, automatic re-billing either monthly or weekly. 

Are we consoling the young and innocent when this part of their defenses comes crashing down while at the same time losing a piece of our walls in the knowledge that we could have prepared them to deal with the destruction better or not have to go through it at all? 

We teach the young to value their votes, obey the laws and respect the legislators and members in all aspects of the legal system. Then we they find out about SLAPP lawsuits and leaders and legislators creating laws with the apparent purpose of protecting scumbags like Bob Murray (and Donald Trump) by allowing them to just sue people and cost them lots of money for telling the truth about them. So again, is honesty the best policy? Should laws be obeyed? If the dishonest are protected and their protection is actively entrenched in the laws of the land, are we lying to the young?

I hope you watched both episodes of "Last Night Week Last Night Tonight." It's a great show! And I can't think of anything better to do when learning about such despicable (but successful) assholery than laugh about it. Indeed, it's often how I choose to point out weaknesses in logic exhibited online. Take this example for example:

 When I saw this posted on a friend's Facebook page, I couldn't contain my desperation to add to it, "Yup. Sad what a lifetime of being lied to does to people. But the artist forgot the speech bubbles for the other extreme, the militantly positive. "We're not sinking. Everything is A O K!" "This is supposed to happen." "The ship isn't bringing us down, YOU are with all your negativity!" "What are you one of those anti-techers?"

Yes, that IS a reference to the term "anti-vaxxers" a term I think has been bandied about during flu seasons and now during the Covid 19 pandemic, a bit too peer-pressurishly. Flawed logic has been a weapon used in this pressuring of the public to get their jabs, and before you get worried, I intend to get mine as soon as I can, but I can't help but point out the harm people are doing to the cause of attaining herd immunity through immunization with the peer-pressure tactics and spurious arguments. What they are doing to those of us who recognize their faulty premises, is causing us to question whether people are purposely misleading us or whether they are too stupid to realize that that's what they are doing. In either case, it makes us LESS likely to do what they are trying to get us to do: get vaccinated.

Here's one example I've been given multiple times: Whenever anyone mentions the AstraZeneca vaccine and its link to blood clots, out come the experts who tell us that when you get Covid 19 you are 300 times more likely to get those blood clots. This is a stat a friend was given, not me. Unsupported and un-linked, but given with confidence nonetheless. I looked it up. Something people are far too unlikely to do before agreeing with stats they'd like to agree with, which my friend did. I found this study, which shows that in a study of half a million Covid patients, 39 per million got CVT, cerebral venous thrombosis - a rare kind of blood clotting. Now "cerebral" means the brain, so I'm assuming it's blood clotting in the brain being measured here, which means it's different from what happened to THIS guy. But this was the story being commented on. At any rate, the Oxford study showed that in 480,000 patients who had received the Pfizer/Moderna vax, only 4 per million got CVT. In AZ, which I guess were the other 20,000, it occurred in 5 per million. So you're about 10 times less likely to get the clots with Covid than after being Pfizerized, and about 8 times less likely than after AZ. Far from 300 times. So I continued searching.

I found the 8-10 times stats reinforced by the University of Minnesota, who also cited the above study. However, what I like about this study is the "cautions and context" section in which they mention that the authors could not verify the accuracy of the CVT diagnoses because scanning the veins in the brain can be time-consuming and challenging. They also said that the risks of blood clots in relation to the AZ vax were NOT looked at. Hmmm... interesting. THEN, Kevin McConway, a doctor from the UK says something that muddles this information even further, while at the same time bringing up the very point that was being avoided by all of the people citing this study. He says, ""The researchers are not claiming that vaccines do not increase the risk at all compared to the risk in people who have not been vaccinated and have also not had COVID-19—but they say the CVT risk in people who have had COVID-19 is about 100 times the risk in the general population," he said. "I do think this puts things into context."

So he somehow ??? goes from 8-10 times, up to 100 times more likely. I guess he feels this exaggeration is excused by previously mentioning the syllogistic weakness, and the thing that has everybody smart enough to understand it, mistrusting it, the fact that the study doesn't show that people WITHOUT Covid are less likely to get blood clots when vaccinated. What he doesn't say is what we all know: they're NOT. They are less likely to get the blood clots if they don't get Covid and if they don't get vaccinated. But I guess a lot of people felt they needed to be purposely misleading and present the spurious argument that people WITH Covid are more likely to get blood clots than are people who got the vaccine. It's not wrong, it's just beside the point. Perhaps it's because of that that people say, "What the hell, blow the stats up a bit."

Are they really doing the efforts at herd immunity through vaccination a favour with this behaviour? I don't think they are. What they are doing is making people FURTHER mistrust the medical profession, the scientists, the doctors as well as the people who are aggressively pushing the vaccines. And I have to mention THAT as well here. I've heard a LOT of people intimating or even overtly saying that if you don't get vaccinated, you're stupid. Really? If anything, the above information shows that even the doctors DON'T KNOW. They hate admitting that, but it's true. It also shows that they are okay with misleading the public. Probably because of those vacations and other free shit Pfizer paid for when the doctors chose to recommend their products. The science is not yet on the side of the pro-vaxers, even though they are fond of claiming it. Nor is the history, as I outlined in my last post. I hope eventually it will be. It looks positive, but rushing it does not help.

Once again, I understand the desire to be positive. I too wish I could give all my friends and family, and even strangers nothing but good news, but I question whether this is the best course of action. It may sound arrogant and elitist, but sometimes I think a dose of reality, not kindness, is the best medicine. And I, for one, would appreciate it if people tried to be more honest regarding the general corruption in the world rather than trying to shelter me from it with obviously flawed information and arguments. I think there are a lot of people like me and we're not well loved by a lot of easily convinced cheerleaders of unresearched information. Maybe when I can learn to access the muse of Wisdom, I'll stop arguing with those people, but until then, I guess I'll continue with my self-sabotagery. 

Today is Saturday. I'll probably have a few beers tonight and go online. Anybody who hasn't already blocked or de-friended me wanna chat?

The following are a couple of cartoons I've seen that don't really tell the whole story. I guess they're accurate for some, but not all unvaccinated people are stubborn, stupid, red (MAGA?)hat-wearing, fat assholes. Maybe characterizing them as such isn't helping? This isn't the worst I've seen either. I saw a meme with the inference that since some people are not doing what the government tells them they should, I guess they won't be obeying traffic lights any more. Those were installed by government and are also suggestions. Another was a meme with a "doctor" holding up a picket sign that says, he's a doctor and he sees a lot of people refusing Covid19 vaccinations. What he DOESN'T see is polio and measles (or two things that vaccinations have wiped out via herd immunity). Vaccines work! Well, yes, they do! Assuming people who don't want the Covid vax yet are anti-every other vaccine doesn't work though. Reign in your enthusiasm there, "Doc." That's not the best bedside manner I've ever seen. 

Don't MAKE me change these cartoons! Because I can...

I think it's time. The handle, "Anti-vaxxer" was invented for unreasonable people against certain vaccines, so it's only fair to call unreasonable people IN FAVOUR of certain vaccines "Pro-vaxxers," isn't it? If Pro-vaxxers keep treating the 39% of Americans and the other people who remain undecided about the Covid19 vaccinations, and others who haven't yet gotten the shots, like children or stupid people who need to be sheltered from the facts, the altered cartoons might be more accurate. 

This may not be a popular opinion, (so what's new?), and I may be giving the general public too much credit for too much intelligence, but I feel like I'm seeing a lot of people who need to recalibrate their approaches toward the unvaccinated and this is NOT excluding members of the medical profession, scientists who are trusted to give facts, not opinions and hopes, and leaders who are also trusted (for some reason). It'll STILL be a slow slog toward herd immunity, for reasons outlined in my last post, but I feel like the truth will get us there faster than the salesmanship and overzealousness I'm seeing.  

The Medical Racket Part II

 I didn't even mention in my last post the many times pharmacies here have tallied up my drug costs and given me the price without asking if I have insurance. I produce my alien card and sometimes they STILL feign ignorance. Then I tell them I have insurance and, "Oh geez, yeah the total is one tenth of what we were trying to charge you. What do ya know about that?!" That's how I found out I didn't have insurance. Twice while I was working for Carrot if I remember correctly. What I'm saying is people are constantly on the con in every phase and every level of the medical profession. Everybody knows this, am I right? Even the most outwardly positive of people. 

We all have our versions of reasonable. It's the most important word there is legally speaking and I don't think there is much difference from one person to the next. However, it is rarely if ever fixed. We have variance in our reasonable-meters and it is affected by many things. I don't have any kids, but I constantly hear people talking about how they change a person's thinking. Race, age, culture, there are hundreds of examples. Here's a little clip I love from one of my favourite comedians that includes a few of these things:

Beat your kids so they're not social outcasts! lol Time is also a great reasonableness affecter. Throughout a person's life, reasonable is like a pendulum swinging back and forth depending on current trends, social situation or life events. I've never met anyone with a totally static reasonable-meter. We all develop biases and I think if we're honest, we can probably remember times when subconsciously or even consciously our biases overcame our reasonableness. 

I have biases too. We all do. Every job I get swings my reasonable-meter in favour of this FINALLY being that fabled perfect job and maybe the job I'll hang onto until retirement, though I know it never is. When a member of the Vancouver Canucks gets a penalty, I might find myself arguing the call even if I know it was fair. That bias swings even further during the playoffs. When the whole Vancouver Canuck team (except one player) was on the Covid list not long ago this NHL season, I may have hoped they'd come back before the minimum of two weeks they should have been quarantined. I was very surprised when that was exactly what happened! They were back on the ice before I thought they would (or should) be. And to be honest, I wasn't sure the NHL did the right thing. I had said to several friends and students (I taught a lesson on it) that I'd be perfectly fine with the Canucks season being cancelled in the name of safety. Even though they're highly unlikely to make the playoffs, I must admit I am happy to be watching them play the season out.

I say this because I can relate to the many people I'm hearing of late who are trying to hasten the end of the Covid pandemic. I am SO with you! I miss the phrase, "going outside for some fresh air!" Aside from all my online teaching, which isn't ideal, I currently teach 6 hours a week with a frigging mask on. One stretch of four hours in a row! I can't tell you how chock-a-block full of SUCK that is and it's just going to pack on even MORE suck when the summer, the hot and humid Korean summer settles in. I want this pandemic to end as much as the next person, but I'm hearing some who are being overly optimistic about the whole thing. It has me suspecting the toxic positivity crowd again.

Most famously, the Joe Biden/Kamala Harris presidency has set a goal to give 70% of Americans at least one Covid vaccine shot by the 4th of July. I'd like to pause here and steer off my course slightly to say that I haven't seen anything to be negative about yet from the first 100 days. They're crushing it! I particularly like the way they're dealing with the pandemic, crankin' out over two million vaccine shots a day in the US, 1.9 trillion relief plan, the infrastructure plan, taxing the rich and maybe best of all (definitely most on point) waiving the patent on the vaccine so it can be reproduced legally and cheaply even in poor countries helping fight the pandemic worldwide. I've got to admit I've found myself actually CHEERING for politicians a few times recently. That represents a swing in my reasonableness pendulum. But then it wasn't long before it swung back. For example, I love to hear those wonderful three words you so rarely hear from the mouths of purchased politicians: tax the rich, but I try not to get too excited unless I also hear a plan that goes with it to make sure the rich actually PAY those taxes and don't just offset them with price hikes for those products which make them rich, thus rendering taxing the rich in actuality a deferred tax on the usual tax payers. Indirect tax is no better than direct tax.

Which brings us to the first point, I would love to see 70% of Americans jabbed by Independence Day but it ain't gonna happen. This is not going out on much of a limb, but from what I've read, I don't even think it'll happen by NEXT Independence Day. I know it's harsh, and people like to avoid negativity like that, but I believe in facing up to harsh reality, not accentuating the positive and eliminating the negative. It allows me to prepare better for the suckage. 

I'm not going to just put that out there without citing reliable sources. People often question why they should believe ME when I'm talking with them about stuff I've read. And to be fair, I don't have a very quick mind for referencing all the ideas that are rambling around in my noggin. There's a guy named Iain MacLeod who is co-founder and CEO of a novel viral diagnostics company currently dealing with the Covid 19 pandemic. He's also a research associate at Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health. Here's a summation of what he says about the 70% prediction:

First of all, I learned something new right from the get-go reading Iain's stuff. The term "herd immunity" was one I knew, but I always thought it just referred to people exposing themselves to germs or viruses to catch them and develop immunities to them. You know, the way people whose kids had measles used to tell their kids to play with other kids in the hood to get it all overwith in one go. And like the Swedes tried to achieve in the early days of Covid. But this was natural herd immunity. Sweden, a country of 10.1 million, just recently topped a million Covid cases and over 14,000 deaths, so I don't think it worked. 

What the US is trying to achieve, and what Iain writes about is also herd immunity, but it's achieved through people catching and recovering from Covid 19 as well as people attaining immunity through vaccination. The 70% figure was not chosen randomly by the Biden administration it turns out. It's the percentage of immune people "in the herd" calculated to be necessary in order to make it so difficult for a person with Covid to pass it to someone who isn't immune, that the virus will eventually die out. 70%. It doesn't seem so hard, does it?

Well, there are many things to consider. First, the efficacy of the various kinds of vaccines have been measured so far to be 90% for Pfizer, 70% for Astra Zeneca, 66% for Johnson and Johnson. I don't know about Sputnik or Sinovac or any of the knock-offs that will soon be produced all over the place, but let's take 90% as the most efficient. The fact that none of the vaccines are 100% means, according to Iain Macleod, at least 80% of Americans must be vaccinated to attain herd immunity. 

Add to this the results from a recent Kaiser Health survey in which 13% of Americans say they'll never get the vax, 7% will only take it if required and 31% are taking a wait and see attitude. This already makes things impossible unless people change their minds, but let's continue.

People under the age of 16 can't yet safely be given the Pfizer vax, Moderna people under 18, and pregnant women are advised against it but can get it if they choose. We can assume the other vaxes are not yet safe for young folks either. That's over 74 million people as yet ineligible to receive the vaccine. About 25% of Americans are still restricted from getting the vaccine, but have proven to be efficient asymptomatic spreaders. 

The durability of the Covid 19 vaccine is, as yet, unknown. It may persist, it may wear off and require booster shots like tetanus or diphtheria. Public acceptance, making it safe for kids, durability testing, these are some of the things that just take time with vaccines and no amount of positivity will speed them up. And this is not to mention the usual problems every vaccine development runs into, or the variants, which we've already seen. For instance the P1 variant, that has been called the Brazilian variant, was not what the Covid vaccines were designed for. It is believed they will be less effective in fighting it. Pfizer and Moderna are showing promising results against variants, but nobody knows the exact figures yet. 

Iain MacLeod states that Covid 19 is going to be part of American life until after 2022. Herd immunity won't be achieved for years yet, but the outlook is positive. He believes it will be achieved. 

Development of a vaccine often takes 10-15 years. Coronaviruses have been with us a long time. Some were identified in the mid '60's. But Covid 19 was first reported on the last day of 2019, which means we've had it for a bit less than 16 1/2 months. That's not enough time to go through all the stages of vaccine development. Again, thinking positively is not going to change that.

Stage one of vaccine development is called the exploratory stage and often lasts 2-4 years. It is when researchers identify natural and synthetic antigens that help prevent or treat a disease or virus. Sometimes antigens include substances derived from pathogens like in the case of the flu shot.

Next comes the pre-clinical stage. This is the stage in which tissue, cell and animal testing is performed to assess safety. Commonly mice and monkeys are the unfortunate animals. Sorry to NEG you all like that, but it's the truth. The pre-clinical stage often takes 1-2 years. 

The IND (Investigational New Drug) stage is when a company submits an application to the FDA showing their research. If it's approved, the next stage is moved onto. 

THIS stage is called Phase 1. Small group trials of between 20-80 people are performed.

Phase II - Larger group trials like thousands and even tens of thousands of trial subjects.

Phase III - Assessing safety in large groups and licensing accordingly.

I don't know enough about this to be sure if the Covid 19 vaccines were hurried through these stages, and like the Canucks hurrying back from quarantine and playing again, I'm happy we're here, but I can't help having some nagging doubts that this whole thing is being rushed. This is why I can relate to the people who are on the fence, those 31% of Americans with the wait and see attitudes.

I would really love to be as sure as a LOT of people seem to be that the vaccines are totally safe and we should all get them! I would love to be sure enough to call people who DON'T get them stupid or antivaxxers or science-deniers, but I don't think that's the case. I also don't think this is the most effective way to convince those people to change their minds. In fact, if anything, it might make them harden their stances in defiance of peer pressure. 

Science brought us the Yellow Fever vaccine disaster in 1942 when thousands of US soldiers ended up getting injected with Hepatitis B and jaundice. Talk about yer friendly fire! It also brought us the dengue fever vaccine disaster in the Philippines that actually increased people's chances of getting what they were being vaccinated against. It was called the Dengvaxia vaccine and it was given to school children. This was 2017 folks. 

Mistakes happen. They seem to happen more when large amounts of money are involved. We've been effectively socialized to trust our medical system even though they constantly lie to us. It's much like our political system and I don't think the two are as separate as we may believe. Remember when Pfizer and other vaccine makers promised not to profit from the Covid 19 vaccines? They wanted to help humanity! Those well-known philanthropic people of Big Pharma! Well we thought it was horseshit then and we KNOW it's horseshit now. Pfizer - 15-30 billion. Moderna - 18-20 billion. J&J up to 10 billion. Astra Zeneca - 2-3 billion. 

And what did these altruistic humanitarians say when Biden waived their patents on Covid 19 vaccine production? They cried danger of course. They're claiming things like the supplies of ingredients will now be subjected to worldwide rushes and this will create dangerous shortages or something like that. Yeah, sounds more to me like competition will be dangerous to THEM and their bottom line. I've even read criticism to the effect that other vaccine developers will rush to produce the vaccines maybe cutting corners to come out with theirs first and cash in on the profits. Oh, you mean like YOU guys did?

Okay, no, I can't say that for sure. I don't want to act like I'm SURE about something without the facts. But if you find your reasonableness-meter swinging toward trust in Big Pharma on a wave of non-profit and new American government and positivity these days, I just thought I'd give you something to think about that might limit that swing a little bit. 

Don't get me wrong, I'm getting the vaccine as soon as it's available. And I hope people will safely achieve herd immunity worldwide as soon as possible. But I think there are some people being a little overpositive and hopeful out there. I'll tell you the brightest hope I have in all of this just so you don't think I'm completely negative, and I'll give it to you in meme form. It's a nice way to conclude this post I reckon.

The Medical Racket Part I

 Well, let's put that filth behind us. Onward and upward to some good, old fashioned Korea bashing! And before I start, let me say this: I don't whinge about any countries I don't love. If I hated Korea, the rantings herein wouldn't bother me much. But it seems every time I see attempts to overcome the crippling xenophobia at the heart of all the worst evils of Korea, like the school where I work or the Global Korea Scholarship I'm honoured to be helping choose recipients of at this moment from probably more than 25 countries, racism rears its ugly head again. I'm not even gonna start this one. I'll let the Korea Times do it for me: Check this out! I mean of all the nerve, nay the temerity, nay, nay I say, the unmitigated GAUL for those foreigners in Korea to start businesses with the permission of the government without knowing the government would change its mind in the future even considering retroactive punishment for the unforgivable crime of being non-clairvoyant! Come on man! Flag on the play!

You might think the Korea Times is the Korean equivalent of the Onion, but I assure you there are no satirists at the Korea Times. This is just one of a bazillion examples of what I have been calling, on and off this blog, for years, "foreigner fuckery" or "foreign fuckery." Either or. You can't get away from it. Even with Covid shutting us away from the majority of our exposure to the locals, we gotta go out sometime and, BAM, it'll getcha! Why, just last week I opened up a bill from the government insurance of Korea, the NHIS or National Health Insurance Scheme (you gotta love that name! "Scheme." That sounds so much like scam, I don't need to make jokes!) and it was for about 400 bucks. I think I explained on this blog before that my previous contract ended at the end of Feb and my new one started April first, so I went uninsured for a month. I knew the new rule about charging foreigners for insurance while they are here, whether they want it or not and if they are not covered by their jobs or don't have a job. I only found out about this because of my dealings with the NHIS that I didn't have and found out I wasn't covered by making a doctor's appointment only to arrive and be charged full price because my employer had not paid my insurance. So you can be uninsured, evidently, if it's your employer who's trying to save a buck hoping you don't go to get your teeth cleaned or some hemorrhoids removed or whatever. That's fine and dandy. But if the foreigner is the one in default, hunt it down and commit fuckery.

I knew they were gonna get me for my missing month. Even though I got no bill in the mail at my last apartment, I was sure they'd track me down. I told my new supervisor, Pyung Hwa about the situation and she said they probably sent something to my old place too late. But they'd find me. And they did. Four hundred bucks! For a month of insurance? I was pretty sure it didn't cost that much. It's just bare bones insurance. In fact, the hospital I was going to for my blood sugar treatments and meds, St. Mary's in Pyeong Taek, doesn't even TAKE people on NHIS. They only took me because my blood sugar was really high! Dangerously high. Gravely dangerously high! Is there any other kind of dangerously high? So why 400 bucks? Well this I DIDN'T know - the national insurance scam charges foreigners for mandatory insurance THREE months at a time! Foreign fuckery. 

I have been wracking my brain all day trying to recall the confluence of events from back then, just over a year ago, and can't remember exactly. I know I had to go to Soon Chun Hyang hospital near Itaewon to get the E-2 visa health check for immigration. I had been getting treated by an old doctor who, I gather, is quite a celebrity in these parts. He's the face of the SCH Hospital. If you go to their website, there's his mug. Well he had me eating boiled eggs and taking a couple of pills to try to get rid of frequent urination I was experiencing. I had a couple of incidents on buses where I didn't think I was going to make it. I can't tell you how traumatic that was! "Should I just whip it out and piss on the bus floor? Should I go in my water bottle? Should I wrap a towel around my wiener and let 'er rip?" Those thoughts didn't help things, let me tell you. I thought maybe the stress sweat would dehydrate me enough to ease my urge, but that didn't work. Sleeping was impossible. I got off the bus a bag of nerves, sprinted to the nearest urinal and didn't really have to go that badly by then. I'm still a bit scared on buses even though things are under control. Now it's just psychosomatic. 

At any rate, the guy was testing me for everything, (including blood pressure and blood sugar) and he said my numbers were high, but getting better. Our goal was to avoid the use of insulin. I thought we were doing fine. The meds he was giving me caused some issues and we had to change a few times, but I didn't have pee problems as badly. I don't think it fully went away though. I guess I wasn't eating enough hard boiled eggs.

Well then I changed jobs. When you change employers in Korea, you need to undergo a physical examination for general health and illegal drugs. Used to have to take HIV tests too, but a gal from NZ who was teaching over here sued the Korean government for violating foreigners' rights in that way. She won and now we don't have to take the HIV tests any more. I'm telling you this now because it comes to bear later in our story.

I decided rather than searching through the long list of hospitals on the webpage HiKorea that I have found to be very unreliable in the past, I'd just go to SCH Hospital, my hospital, to get my E-2 visa health check because I asked my doctor and he told me they do them there. I'd be working in Cheonan, but I didn't want to waste time looking all over the place for a hospital in Cheonan that did the checks. And don't even bother to ask at the Cheonan Immigration Office which Cheonan hospitals do the health checks they are requiring from you - they won't tell you even though they absolutely know. Foreign fuckery.  

So I went to Seoul to SCH Hospital to get it done. There I was met by a team of nurses who hustled me, cattle-like, from station to station doing eye test, blood pressure test, height and weight measurement, blood drawing, urine taking and at the end of it all I was told my blood pressure was high. They asked me to sit down for 5 minutes then they'd test again. After the second test, it was still high. I think we did three tests before I met with the doctor. He was a young fella and his English wasn't as good as my older, more famous doc, but he did okay. He said he was worried about my blood pressure and my blood sugar. I told him I knew about the blood sugar and was seeing a doctor AT THAT HOSPITAL, who was okay with both my blood pressure and sugar. Well, that didn't satisfy him. In the country where they use phones more than any other country, I suppose it was too much effort for him to ring up my doctor and check with him. He said he was going to fail me on my health test. I told him that in order for me to get medicine to treat the symptoms that worried him, I'd need health insurance and I will get that from my new job, but in order to get my new job, I'd need him to pass me on this health check. He eventually relented due to my Catch 22 situation, but only if I promised to see a doctor as soon as I got settled in Cheonan and get my blood issues under control. I said I would, took my test results to Cheonan immigration, got my new work visa and worked my first year for Gonju University. While there, I started seeing a new doc in Pyeontaek because for the first time, I found out what level my blood sugar was at. It was after a big kalbi feast, but my good friend Heather happened to have a blood sugar testing kit on her and we tested me with it. I was over 500. Well over. That's bad. Like emergency bad. So I managed to get an appointment at St. Mary's Hospital in Pyeongtaek even though I only had NCIS. So for a year we've been working on my blood and a few other things. My blood sugar is consistently 150 now. We're still trying to get that down, but it's by no means dangerous. And blood pressure hadn't been an issue all year.

This year I renewed my contract with Gongju University, but I'm based in Gongju now instead of Cheonan. If you renew a contract, you don't need to do a health check. But at Gongju's immigration office, which isn't in Gongju, we have to travel to Daejeon, the worker looks at me funny (I believe I saw a "gotcha" glint in her eye), prints out my health check from last year and points to a Korean word on it that means "fail." She says, "You failed your health check last year, you need to get a new one done." I was shocked! But then I asked the obvious question, "If I failed, how did I work last year?" I could see smoke escaping from the worker's ears, a common result obvious questions to immigration workers tends to bring about, but she remained unshaken in her pursuit of foreigner fuckery. "You need to get a new health check."

While sitting there in confusion I wondered if that young doctor had actually failed me or if he had given me a conditional pass or if there was a note included with my health check from him or if maybe Gongju University in Cheonan had swung some sort of a deal with immigration to get me working even though I had failed my health test. I hadn't been told any of the above if they had been the case. I also thought, since I had already been asked to supply my rental contract, which I had foolishly forgotten to bring, and was allowed to call Pyunghwa and get her to email it to me, then print it out and give it to the immigration worker, why couldn't we just call up the SCH Hospital and get that doctor to send an explanation? Again, in the country that uses the phone more than any other...

The only thing the immigration worker did was asked why I had failed. I told her I was pretty sure I hadn't failed, but I DID remember some concern about my blood sugar. I told her I had a complete physical printout from my doctor in Pyeongtaek that was from about 2 months before that shows my blood sugar at 140. There wasn't any confusion or language barrier, but even though immigration office workers deal with a LOT of foreigners, most of whom speak English, and most of the workers speak English just fine, they are very reluctant to use it. Foreigner fuckery. So I called up Pyunghwa AGAIN and the whole time they're talking on the phone I'm getting angrier and angrier because I know I'm not going to finish immigration, I know Pyunghwa's not going to convince the immigration worker that my blood sugar is fine, and I KNOW we could settle the whole thing with a phone call to SCH Hospital. I also started wondering if there actually WAS some note in the files at immigration and on the screen this worker was looking at that explained how I could have worked last year without passing my health check. She was just ignoring it so she could do what in all of my experience at Korean immigration offices throughout the country I discern to be the primary function of immigration agents: to make sure NOBODY visits a single time without being sent on a wild goose chase to get some additional, superfluous file or certificate or letter or stamped/apostilled pile of dogshit, or several, before they are done with immigration. 

I get the phone back and sure enough, Pyunghwa tells me I have to get a new health check done. But I went to Costco in Daejeon so the day wasn't a complete waste.

Not long after, like maybe a day later, Pyunghwa had set up an appointment for me to get a health check at a clinic just around the corner from where I live in Gongju. I was allowed to bring Aminur, a student at Gongju U. from Bangladesh who speaks Korean well, as my translator. We get to the clinic and he's explaining and I'm trying to make sure we get the right thing. I had kept the printout of my previous health check the Daejeon Immi worker printed out for me while I was there, showed it to the receptionist at the clinic, told Aminur to make sure they were told it was an E-2 visa check and the nurses were all saying, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, don't worry, don't worry," which I know has a tendency to mean the exact opposite. 

This is us in the Gongju U. Global Language Clinic, my office. The WHOLE THING! At any rate, I was poked and prodded and ex-rayed and tested and such. Blood pressure was given a hearty thumbs up by the nurse who took it using the stethoscope and airball, which I think is more accurate than these damn machines. A coupla days later I went to Daejeon to meet my NEW doctor, an endocrinologist, or diabetes specialist, who gave my blood pressure AND my blood sugar the okay and I got three months more medicine. When I arrived back in Gongju, I picked up the results of my visit to the clinic. I am assured by everyone that I don't have any health problems, but I AM hemorrhaging MONEY! Even with the insurance, this is costing me a lot of dough! Like over a thousand bucks. I know if you're American reading this you're saying, "That's nothing!" but it's a lot to me! Being Canadian, I'm used to getting sodomized at TAX time, not hospital time.

I think it was the next day Pyung Hwa and I got into her car and drove back to Daejeon to hand in my health check. I was worried that it was loose in an envelope that wasn't sealed and I was able to read it, but I assumed Pyung Hwa had things under control. In the car on the way, Pyung Hwa mentioned that it'd be nice to get this over and done with. I told her not to count those chickens just yet. I said immigration likes sending people to get extra papers and things. They LIVE for it! What they like even better is sending people to get extra shit TWICE. I told her what they'd probably say is that this was not the right kind of health check and I had to go to a special hospital to get an official governmentally sanctioned E-2 visa check and it had to be in a sealed envelope etc. etc. etc... and you know what's coming - that's exactly what we were told. Now I was REALLY mad!

I said to Pyunghwa that the only difference between the real thing and the one we had shown her was the drug testing. That makes it slower and more expensive as well. But I said that drugs were not the reason I was marked as having failed my last health check. If they were, I would have been deported. If I failed due to drugs and somehow worked an entire year, I would be deported and the doctor, or whoever allowed me to work after testing positive for illegal drugs, would lose his/her job. And now I had a shiny NEW paper from a hospital in Daejeon no more than a couple days old showing that I was in good health including blood pressure and blood sugar. Well guess what immigration said. Even though there was obviously no need for it, they took distinct pleasure in sending me on another wild goose chase to waste more of my time and money and bark, roll over, and play dead for my waegooky treat.

It was a dismal drive back to Gongju. I was seething. I am pretty sure Pyunghwa thought I was mad at her for setting me up at the little clinic where they lied to her, lied to me and lied to Aminur and said they'd give us an official E-2 visa health check. But I wasn't. I was mad at the utter futility of getting this health check, the time it would waste and MY money I'd be flushing down the Korean Immigration Shitter AGAIN! I related several of my past visits to the throne of the almighty immigration bullshit costly task. I couldn't tell if she was getting mad at the stories or getting mad at me for telling them. Sometimes Koreans don't want to hear how shittily their country treats people. But I gave it to her both barrels. 

It was a Friday so we were off for the weekend after we got back to Gongju. But even though she was off, Pyunghwa looked on the stupid HiKorea list of hospitals, which I had told her was shit, and found one in Gongju where I could get the E-2 visa check done. She called them up then called me. She said they had told her that I'd first have to go to another place in Gongju for the psychological evaluation, then bring that with me to their hospital where I could get the health check done. Pyunghwa had asked me earlier about psychological tests being part of the visa health check. I had already told her they weren't. I think I had softened my answer by saying that possibly a coherence check might be done like you might do if you are administering CPR. Ask the person's name or just check if their answers to questions are normal, but there's no psych eval. I then mentioned how the old health check form had a square for the HIV test, but the new one didn't have that square. I told her about the Kiwi teacher and the lawsuit and told her that only a judge can order a psychological evaluation in civilized countries and even then only in extenuating circumstances. Having one on the visa health check would be considered and invasion of rights and freedoms like the HIV check had been. But I guess she wanted to take the hospital's word for it, not mine. I can't blame her for that, it's how we're all socialized isn't it? Doctors don't lie. Hospitals won't cheat you. The medical profession is not just out to get your money.

So I told her I would not be going to that hospital. She argued that it was on the HiKorea list and it was closer and would take less time. I argued that if they think a psych eval is part of the E-2 visa health check, they DON'T do E-2 visa health checks. They're lying, like the other place did, and I will just be wasting MORE of my money while taking MORE time than if I just go to a place where I know I can get a proper one done. I think she took this a bit hard because she was trying to help and I was getting mad. Again, not at her, at the lying, thieving medical profession. But I wasn't going to shell out more dough to spare her feelings. I told her I knew some places where other people and I had had these things done before and I would figure it out myself. She said something like if I don't want her help, fine. I know fine doesn't mean fine sometimes.

I arranged to go back to the source of all the problems, SCH Hospital in Seoul. I had to go in Sunday night and stay over while fasting for the blood test for the third time in a week! That SUCKED let me tell you! I stayed in Itaewon where I had NEVER fasted in my life! Quite the opposite. Good eating and lots of drinking is what's best about Itaewon. It was tough, but I managed. I went to the place to get my health check and again it was performed in production line fashion. I had to go back a few times for the blood pressure check again. I even showed them that my blood pressure was fine like TWO DAYS AGO! But the first reading from their stupid machine was something like 190/100, the second one was 150/90 and the third was 130/81. Those were within about 15 minutes. I think their machine is broken. There were several OTHER people who were sitting down to get their blood pressures re-taken too.

 Wouldn't it be just the quintessential Korean immigration/health scam story if all this shit had been caused by a broken blood pressure machine?  

It's quite possible. That should scare everyone here. To make a long blogpost short, too late, the results were fine and immigration accepted them. They didn't send me or Pyunghwa on any further wild goose chases and I'm done with immigration for 10 more months.

In a way this is a positive blog post, or as positive as it gets from me, but consider it a set-up for what's coming next. I've ranted here before about toxic positivity and I'm going to blather on about it again in my next post along with another pandemic.

All The Breast To You!

Boobs are great! I think I've been way too negative on this blog. Some other people do too. And some have suggested I write about something I like. Well, I like boobs. And before you go thinking I'm being a misogynistic creep here, the main suggest-er was a girl. So let us contemplate the female breast, at the request of someone who has two of them, shall we? 

Maybe the best thing anyone ever said about breasts was said by Conan O'Brien when he said, "The first thing men notice about women is their eyes. Then when their eyes aren't looking, they notice her breasts." I can't argue with Conan on that. Another funny person, Rita Rudner, said, "Some people think having large breasts makes a woman stupid. It's quite the opposite. A woman having large breasts makes a man stupid."

You may be able to see from the lists I am about to provide (genuflect) against my better judgment and the general content of this blog, but in accordance with a request I received, from a woman I'll have you know, that I don't always agree with Rita. I like small breasts sometimes. I like breasts of all kinds of shapes and sizes! To me, breasts bring me back to the days of my childhood in a way. Freud would go crazy with that statement I'm sure, breast-feeding and all. But what I meant was they remind me of candy. They are the candy of old age for me! I want to peel off their wrappers and suck on them all day, but, alas, I don't have enough money to buy them. 

Okay, if that offended you, you probably shouldn't read on. While I post this as an homage to the beauty of the female form, this may come off as an affront to women, the Me Too movement, objectivity and you name it. So proceed with caution. I hope you don't think less of me, but this was literally suggested to me as a blog subject by a female friend of mine. I will not disclose her name in the interest of maintaining her plausible existence. NO REALLY!!!

I thought about the suggestion for a while. Then I thought about boobs for a while. Then I realized that I'd been down that road a thousand times, only without any encouragement. The female in question, whether you believe she exists or not, asked me if I had any preferences as to size, shape, equality (because women rarely have two boobs the same size, in fact 90% of women have 15-20% diff), and other factors. I gave a non-committal answer, but she pried. She asked about celebrity boobs. Just to get an idea. Which were my fave; which were surprising; which weren't surprising; which were disappointing; and then we got on the MOST interesting subject of which celebrity boobs we'd like most to see. Because, you see, she TOO wanted to see some boobs that she hadn't. It's a strange, but wonderful thing about some gals, but THEY like seeing boobs too! I haven't met a dude, aside from gay guys (and even some of them?) who like seeing dicks in movies. Or in washrooms, showers, videos, popcorn buckets... Dicks aren't generally well accepted when they're waved around. If you disagree, why is it then that a guy who does so will almost always get a fine or a ticket or even get hauled into jail? Whereas, a girl who lets her girls get some sunlight will generally receive bashful reprimands from the police, if not standing ovations, then instructions to put them away. 

Me and my friend, who owns a couple of fine breasts herself, chatted about this. Then she, being a reader of my blog, said, "You should post about this." I didn't resist for long.

And so, crediting/blaming my friend for this, I'll happily type on, devoid of any political or moral recourse. Don't try to pretend you aren't interested. If you weren't, why are you reading this? This is going to be a super-objectifying listing of celebrity boobs and cleavage. You've been warned.

Okay, I'll start with the boobs I've seen (and we've probably ALL seen) that I thought would be great and they really WERE. Let's go backwards from 15. The other categories won't have 15 entries, but this one does because a lot of famous women are, bless their exhibitionist hearts, okay with boobie baring!

15. Tanya Roberts in "Beast Master." I'm old. She was not just Charlie's angel. And I think maybe during her time on "That 70's Show" she was packin' a little extra. She didn't need it. Her nude scene in that movie was legendary in my books.

14. Amanda Peet in "The Whole Nine Yards." Just WHAM! There they were and there they stayed for a while! She was not shy, bless her exhibitionist heart!

13. Julie Andrews in S.O.B. Yes! Her hills were alive with the... okay, too soon. Maybe I should save stuff like that until we get deeper into this.

12. Brooke Burke is someone you might not know. She was the host of a show rating beaches around the world and she was a bikini model. But she never got naked even though her show SHOWED some folks getting naked around her. Finally, she posed for some nude shots and it did not disappoint. Because you may not know who she is, I post the following pic:

11. Kate Winslet. I don't need to post any pic here because the whole world saw her boobs in the Titanic. And they were lookin' pretty noice!

10. Uma Thurman was in a movie with Glenn Close and John Malkovich early in her career called "Strange Liaisons," and there was a quick glance of her boobage that must have worn some VHS tapes out rewinding, pausing and so forth.

9. Denise Richards in "Wild Things." Nuff said.

8. Angelina Jolie in "Gia." And if you doubt the stats about uneven boobs, there's plenty of footage here. You don't need micrometers to see, but... who cares? These are some of the nicest boobs I've seen ever!

7. Halle Berry in "Swordfish." It was contrived and not important to the plot, but who cares? Not me!

6. Heather Thomas in the movie "Zapped." I still don't know if this was a body double or not, but the poster of her in her pink bikini gave me a pretty good idea... and the movie was what I expected.

5. Emma Ratajkowski has been shot nude in lots of mags. Her nudity in the music video for "Blurred Lines" she says she regrets cuz it might not have been as artistic. Again, who cares? Not me!

4. Alexandra Daddario was nude in "True Detective" but I didn't see that movie until I saw some movies she WASN'T nude in like "The Layover" with another person who will appear in this post. She is freakishly perfect and even though Conan O'Brien might argue with me, the first thing I WOULD notice about her would be her eyes. But, of course, he's right about what would happen after...

3. Jamie Lee Curtis was topless in a very good movie from my movie-going days, "Trading Places." I watched that recently and was shocked at its impropriety! But still, what a rack!

2. Nicki Minaj is always "accidentally" showing her spectacular boobs. I don't mind that a bit! 

1. It may not surprise anyone reading this that my number one boob flash on this list is the number one pause point in video history, "Fast Time at Ridgemont High." I think Phoebe Cates was one of, or maybe the most gorgeous women of the 80's. I, for one, (of millions) will be eternally thankful for her swimming pool, "Living in Stereo" scene from that movie. I can't hear that song or watch that movie without thinking about her knock-out knockers! And, as mentioned before, they're not very big, just, as the French say, "enough to fill a wine glass." 

All right, I already feel like a bit of a heel. This seems like something I might be writing for a skin book or chatting with a horndog friend. Getting a little uncomfortable here. But it's what my imaginary friend wanted, so I'll keep on going. Please don't hold this against me but we'll now get into an even MORE judgmentally evil category: the boobs that I thought would be good, but were disappointing. Now... let me say this: just because boobs are disappointing doesn't mean I don't like them. In fact, I'm pretty sure most guys will say the same. Boobs are like pizza, even when they're bad, they're still pretty good. I've never said, "Oh, shame on her for showing her boobs!" while watching a movie or music video. I wouldn't even say that to a 99-year-old woman! I've been to nude beaches before and I've seen topless AND bottomless women who were not exactly rockin' fantabulous funbags. But to me they brought a smile to my face and a tingle to my crotchal area anyway. I'm going to say that even though the next entries to this (unusual) blogpost are entitled "disappointing," I still got a boner for every one of them! 

I can't believe I'm writing this! I hope you are happy, my female friend that everyone will think I made up. Only 10 in this category and they were really hard to think of. Cuz I like all boobs when they're set free!

10. Reese Witherspoon was topless in a vampire thing I didn't watch. But I saw the clips. I gotta admit, I thought her boobs would be different. This is NOT to say they weren't nice, just not as perfect as the rest of her. And sue me for saying her boobs were not perfect! They were still great! :-)

9. Same goes for Demi Moore. I think I would have preferred to see her girls BEFORE they got all blown up and fake before she showed them to us in "Striptease." Probably would have been nicer. But this is not to say they weren't nice, just, you know, not real.

8. Cameron Diaz has some nice boobs! But after seeing "The Mask" I just thought they were bigger. I wish I didn't have such heightened expectations.

7. Maggie Gyllenhaal is as cute as a button! I absolutely love her! And her acting is as good as her brother's. I have a crush on her. Even after seeing her naked on screen. Again, even if my brain wasn't as impressed with her as with the list above, my weiner still was. Ugh, I KNEW this would be the hardest category! But I promised.

6. Teri Hatcher said on Seinfeld that her boobs were real and they were spectacular. I don't know if I'd go that far after seeing them in a B movie with Julia Robertses bro. I forget the name of it. Down south, in the Louisiana swamps. Anyhoo, nice, but not thrilling.

5. Marilyn Munroe was a blonde bombshell and looked great showing cleavage, but when she finally got naked, her bod wasn't as great as I thought it would be. Now, she was from an era long before I had testosterone, so that might be why this phenomenon occurred. But when compared to another blonde bombshell from her era (on my next list) I don't know how she was more popular. Different era, different ideas of beauty I guess.

4. Not surprisingly it was in a movie when she was portraying Marilyn Munroe that Mira Sorvino first bared her boobage and it was a let down. I have to say again, ABSOLUTELY not bad boobs, but not as good as I'd hoped for. 

3. Meg Ryan was the Alexandra Daddario of my day. Only with blonde hair. Her eyes WERE the first thing I noticed. I am not lying! I hardly even thought about her chesticles. In "When Harry Met Sally" when she's wearing that blue gown on New Year's? Oh my GOD Magnum! Her eyes were POPPIN' and I fell in love! But I gotta admit, in the Doors movie when she got topless, she fell off that pedal stool I had her on. (IT crowd joke)

2. Okay, I feel like such a humongous heel for the last 8 entries, but the next two... not so much. Tara Reid in the "Big Lebowski" was HOT! She was hot for so long! What the frig did she do? Her and Lindsay Lohan! Like watching a priceless wax sculpture melt.

1. Janet Jackson during the halftime show of Superbowl 38. Even though it was totally not a "wardrobe malfunction" and even though it was probably done to increase her popularity, that was not the best boob in the world. So many pics of her while clothed hinted that she had some dynamite knockers underneath! She shoulda kept us thinking that. Crazy sun nipple covering or not, that was a CAREER malfunction.

Okay, now that I feel like a complete asshole, I'll try to bail myself out with a list of boobs I haven't seen, but I'd like to. The first one and the last one could be shockers.

Take a look at this:

Queen Elizabeth II was a stone cold beauty! And don't pretend you can't see the bosom that's bustin out of that dress. She's probably got the best hidden bazooms of all time! Back then or even right now, I don't care, I'd throw her some beads at Mardi Gras! 

9. Scarlett Johansson had some shady, blurry pics circulated, and she's been in a few movies with "muted" nudity, but I bet to see her boobs clear as day would be like looking straight into the eyes of Medusa! You'd probably turn to stone. Or at least part of you would...

8. Kate Upton is one of those gals that just has IT. She is probably the Marilyn Munroe of our times. She's not as gorgeous as a girl from her time who shows up on this list at number 5, but she was WAY more popular! Kate Upton gets S.I. Swimsuit edition covers over girls with "model" figures while she's considered kinda fat. I love her for that and even more for her sense of humour. And then there are two other assets she has...

7. Jessica Alba's boobs are not big but all natural and from what I've read and heard, nourished with only the healthiest of foods and drink, so they're EXTRA special! 

6. Winona Ryder was popular for a time and she did a lot of movies in which it seemed like she, or the movie makers, did their best to hide her, uh, femininity. Finally, when Brahm Stoker's Dracula came out and we saw the unforgettable scene with white top in the rain running... well you know. It was mamor... I mean memorable.

5. Jayne Mansfield was just a hard body that made all the other sex symbols of her time jealous. Sophia Loren for example: beautiful! Here she is looking sideways in a very famous picture at the assets that Jayne has but she didn't. She might be thinking how much more famous she could have become if she was the lucky one in this picture. Or maybe she was admiring those beauties like we all can't help but do!

4. Katy Perry if we stick with what Conan said, has the eye of the Tiger but when that eye isn't looking at us, we tend to check out one (or two) of her other formidable features. She too has some magnificent eyes! I could get lost in them if she didn't have such a distracting pair of, well see for yourselves...

3. Jennifer Love Hewitt. JLH. She's a mistress (some of you will get that) of mystery. What do those glorious golden orbs look like? She's been majestic in her presentation of them leaving the horndogs disappointed and the regular guys thirsting for more. There is no third category there. No guy can look at her, no matter what age, hormone level, or possibly even sexual preference, without lusting after her. Even when she's not even trying! But in some films and TV shows, she has been trying. Yet, alas, we have no confirmation of what we fantasize is hidden beneath her sweaters or her skimpy workout clothes. 

2. We're almost done this post that makes me feel creepier than I've ever felt here before. I kind of regret agreeing to doing this now. Please don't hold this against me. But, on the other hand, I'm kind of going with the flow here and it IS fun to share my preferences on my blog. We all have crushes on famous people, and these are mine. Number two is only second to Phoebe Cates. 

Those just might be the best boobs in the whole world! And I haven't seen them. That's what keeps them up there on the list. 

Number one probably is a downgrade from number two, but the mystery is a great deal more. This is only to see her tits, mind you, I don't feel like I'd have any connection to her on a personal level. I'm sure I'd love Tyra. She's more untouchable, number 10 on this list, probably. And for some reason, she's the one and only person on this list I don't feel too bad about objectifying. Probably because she has already shown her own inhumanity in so many ways. But that still hasn't distracted me from the one (or two) and only thing (or things) that interest me about her: 

Here she is getting her vaccine. I guess the fact that she sometimes does stuff her father wouldn't like interests me too, but it's mostly the boobs. I confess to total shallowness here: by FAR the thing I like most about Ivanka is her boobs. And they're probably fake, bought by Daddy, but they top my list. 

If you are as shallow as I am, and you have made it this far, share with me your agreement, or disagreement with my opinions. I know only one person I'm sure will be interested in this, but I bet some others will be, even if they're not supposed to be...

I apologize to anyone who needs the apology.