Is it just my imagination, or do administrative bureaucrats at institutions of higher education in Korea seem to be the sort of people who, through sheer incompetence, simply got shuffled from position to position until they ended up behind a desk? Sometimes the people sorting bottles in community centers, working jobs created especially for people with special needs come to min, actually.
Test For Theorem:
Step 1: Submit an abstract for a conference.
Step 2: In the process of writing the paper, realize you had it wrong in your abstract, and change the scope, content, and thrust of the paper.
Step 3: Attend conference, new paper in hand with new title and so on. Do the normal thing (like two other people on my panel did, for example) and simply announce a title change at the conference itself.
Step 4: Return home, and apply for the funding reimbursement (which apparently was reduced by the equivalent of $100 for no reason). Submit full packet of receipts, the paper, the conference program, and so on.
Step 5: Get the packet back saying, “This paper has the wrong title.” Explain that you changed the title, like many other people at the conference. Get told, “But you can’t.”
Step 6: Re-print the first page of the paper with the old, completely inappropriate title swapped in for the old one.
Step 7: Wonder how these people ever learned to tie their own shoes. Mutter darkly about how it’s like dealing with little kids.
Step 8: Visit the office processing this paperwork. Bring large assortment of different bottles and cans from your recycling bin. See whether they have an unusual skill at sorting them.
I swear, seriously. The amount of time wasted getting things letter-perfect for silly bureaucrats (who are themselves probably doing it just in case they’re audited by other, higher-up government bureaucrats with similar special needs) is breathtaking.
In other, completely unrelated (okay, maybe not competely, but it started elsewhere) news, I’ve been thinking about an old expression… which has birthed a kind of manifesto of sorts:
Wait. I’ll post that later.