Today I went to the Woori Bank to get my 공인 인중서, which is, basically, a little electronic certificate that I need to have in order to file my taxes. (Which I can only do on paper now: the electronic tax filing through my workplace closed a week ago, and the office assistants either didn’t know, or assumed that foreigners couldn’t do it, or forgot to tell me when it was announced. After a little discussion in which I mentioned I’d done it before (with a different office assistant who is now gone), and it’s much easier with a 공인 …
Tag: PERSONAL
Professored
Contract signed. I’m now on the tenure track, and somehow, subtly, professor describes my job title and not just my job. I’ve just came back from having coffee with the two other foreign profs who got signed on at the same time I did, and we had a good talk about the whole thing. It’s a two-year contract, but while my teaching duties won’t change much (and without going into details, my pay stays close to what it has been), I will have some more duties within the department (webmastery ones and some curriculum stuff, so far), opportunities for bonuses …
Random Things
Over the last eighteen months or so, I’ve become pretty good friends with my co-worker Gwen and her husband Mike. Well, they’ve just had their first baby, a little boy! (I’ve yet to visit, for various reasons including a niggling cold I wouldn’t want to pass on — though don’t babies have a strong immune system? Er, I dunno. I’ll call and ask Gwen.) Anyway, congratulations to them! And suddenly, the balance of weight has shifted back to me being the one who looks more pregnant. This afternoon I’ll be heading across campus to sign my contract for my current …
Koreabeat Translates Lime
Koreabeat recently translated a post by Lime that was written a few years ago, wherein she criticized the writing courses at a hakwon she’d tried out. She was quite surprised to see this fact. And almost immediately someone assumed she was criticizing white hakwon teachers, when, ironically, she was talking about writing courses taught by Korean teachers to Korean students. Someone also IDed her almost immediately. Now I can’t help but wonder if I know SKFK personally, or what?
Hitting the Gym
I haven’t mentioned it here — unlike on Facebook — but I have been hitting the gym for a little while lately. While, yes, the endorphins actually do kick in once I’ve been doing it a while, and yeah, I do feel a bit healthier after a few days of it, I’ll be really honest: I hate exercising. Everything about it: the sweatiness, the aches and pains, the irritation to my very vulnerable Achilles tendons, the bother of going and doing it, the guilt that kicks in at not doing it (and not having done it enough for most of …
And the Bells Were Ringing Out
Not quite too late for it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwHyuraau4Q
Low Point, High Point
Low point of the day: Smarmy Campus Bureaucrat Dude entered my apartment without knocking. Since the house was rather hot (we’re still working on getting the hang of the ondol controls here, which are old-fashioned valves instead of digital controls like modern apartments have), I was at my computer in boxers and a t-shirt, typing away, while Lime was sprawled asleep on the bedroom floor. Smarmy Campus Bureaucrat Dude didn’t even think to apologize for coming in without knocking until I pulled some clothes on and told him it was unacceptable to enter people’s homes without at least knocking or …
Purty Good Day…
Why? Some much-needed documents are on their way here. I received my copy of Interzone 219, with some very fine art illustrating it., and a cheque for my story, too. My students in one class — the graphic novel class — volunteered to work during the first week or so of post-semester break, in order to do a good job finishing up their project, rather than rush through and do a so-so job before exams. I was quite stunned. They jokingly asked for extra credit, but the best I can do is give them a pizza party or take them …
General Stuffings
Been blindingly sick, but only off-and-on, for a few weeks, which explains why I have posted so very little here. But it has not been a slow few weeks, at all: I am finished with the albatross. No, Ringo and Paul, I did not declare, “I am the albatross” — I am no more albatross than I am walrus — I declared that I am finished with the albatross. The albatross being a project I should never have talked anyone else into, but I did, and thank heaven it’s over, and no, it was not worth it. In any sense. …
No Depression in Heaven
I don’t usually use soundtracks for posts, but hey, it’s always worth doing something a little different sometimes, right? My friend Jack was, when I first met him, a devoted inhabitant of that space where black and white and poor and crazy meet in early American music. He introduced me to musicians like Ralph Stanley and the Blue Sky Boys, and showed me how they connected to people like Howlin’ Wolf and Mississippi Fred McDowell. It was with Jack that I first heard McDowell, and Robert Johnson, and so much other music, and was initiated into the secret history of …