Charlie and the House Fly

questionable marketing

The school where I've been working for the past year is part of a chain of schools. While each branch is operated independently, they all use the same curriculum, the same advertising, etc. The current batch of promotional posters that arrived last week are... interesting. The theme is something along the lines of similar but different - comparing the teaching of English Literature to the teaching of the English Language. The theme is fine, but the graphics? I don't get it.

Similar but different: Hitler ≠ Chaplin


Somebody didn't pay attention in biology class.... one sperm and all those eggs?

Charlie and Friend

Orange Cat likes to hang out on the roof of the neighbor's porch. Charlie is, of course, fascinated. Today they were meowing at each other.

The Cat Lady is moving to Seoul!

Woohoo! After all the hurry-up-and-wait nonsense that's been going on for more than two months now, I finally have a job offer. I will soon be leaving sedate East Daegu and the ESL field in order to work as an English language technical writer for a software company located in the Wall Street of Seoul. It's going to be a big change.

Then there's all the stuff-n-nonsense that will be going on between now and my start date in early September:

1. Rent an apartment in Seoul. That will surely be a fiscally painful experience. And by apartment, what I really mean is 'officetel' (and here I'd thought my old apartment in Southern California had been tiny and overpriced).

2. Spend three weeks in Ukraine. Obviously. Because that's what one does.

3. Fly to the US in order to get my visa (because despite there being a perfectly good Korean Consulate in Kiev, I must present myself in person at a consulate in the country of my citizenship in order to apply for my fancy-shmancy visa). On the plus side, I'll get to pick up all of my business clothes from my business-y days in SoCal, and will thus avoid having to outfit myself in frilly Korean businesswoman clothes. And I'll be able to do all my yearly checkups (joy). I'll only be in the US 2-3 weeks, and I expect I'll be running around like a jet-lagged headless chicken.

4. Fly back to Korea. Hooray for global circumnavigation. Put me in a category with Ferdinand Magellan and Francis Drake.

5. Find a cat-sitter for Charlie, as dragging a cat on said circumnavigation would be nigh inhumane. But wait! I can check this one off my list as I've found one already! Come to find out, my replacement at my current school is a cat-lover, and he has kindly agreed to watch Charlie while I'm gone :-) Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure he won't be living where I live now, so she will have to move, which will be stressful for her - although nothing like traveling Korea-Ukraine-USA-Korea in the belly of a plane would be.

So much to do and so little time! (Also, for those of you who know me well, I would just like to point out that this is my 43rd post on this new blog of mine!)

Welcome to the 장마

장마 (pronounced jahng-ma) is the Korean word for the east-Asian monsoon season - and we're right in the middle of it. This is my third summer in Korea, and by far the rainiest. Take a look at the forecast for the next ten days:

At least this weekend I succeeded in getting some awesome rain boots.

I went and splashed in puddles during a lull in the rain...

A moment of self-reflection :-)

And I got a new suitcase to replace the one Charlie peed on when she was in heat (back before she was fixed).

If only I knew whether or not I was coming back to Korea - I can't really start packing until I know where I'm going. If they toss another delay at me on Tuesday, I'm going to tell them to bugger off.

And by "Friday" what we meant was "Tuesday"

This. Is. So. Frustrating. I leave Korea in 23 days; I need start packing and arranging an apartment for September - and doing those things will be vastly different processes depending on if I'll be moving to Seoul or Eastern Ukraine. And I STILL DON'T KNOW.

I had been told that I would receive a decision by "Friday, July 8th at the latest." All day today I kept checking my email every chance I got, growing more and more nervous as the day went on. There's something just so stressful about not knowing. Or about knowing that your future is being decided in a boardroom hundreds of miles away.

I didn't receive a message until I got home from work (sent at 9:15pm), which meant I was feeling stressed all day. Here it is:

We promised to give you an answer by today, but, since there is a small discordance between [...] executives regarding your pay grade.

I feel very sorry, but, would you mind if I give you a final answer by next Tuesday, 12th July.?
If there is any concern about this, please kindly let us know it.

I am so sorry once again.

It seems rather like the people who have been communicating with me (and who were also the ones who interviewed me) made me a salary offer without clearing it with the people in charge. Gah!

Your mission, should you choose to accept it...

"I am a goddess!"

Yes, I did indeed utter those words to my co-worker, J, earlier today. I had succeeded in removing the Personal Shield Pro virus from the shared computer in our office without losing any of our files, and I was feeling pretty stoked.

That feeling carried me through the workday until my 8pm break, when I sat down to check my email. I had received an email from the company in Seoul. I opened it expecting either a 'You're hired!' or a 'Thank you for your interest, but...' Instead, I received this:

It was really nice to have interview with you. It may seem to surprise you, but there is one more step for employment. This step is one of our regular recruiting process and usually given for whom is waiting for our final decision.

The mission is,

Write one page of complete paper (MS Word Format) introducing our product [******] to people who are the target of our sales.

Target readers are native English speaker. In this way, please fully show your English writing skill in the best manner.

Also, please show your understanding ability for our product.

Since our [...] executives will make decision by this Friday, I would be appreciated if you could send the paper by tomorrow, 7th July, 18:00.

They included a document on the product to which they refer (the sort of file which could be used as a promotional brochure or in the background of a presentation) for me to use in writing this paper.

I have to admit that my initial reaction may have involved a lot of profanity. It was 8pm on July 6th, and they needed this by 6pm July 7th? It's not like I'm unemployed here - I have a full-time job! I've been talking with these people for months now. Couldn't they have given me more warning? I mean, I spent most of the rainy weekend inside, kicking my heels. I could've been working on this!

And then I got over it. Yeah, it's annoying, but Korea is the land of the last-minute. That class you were told you weren't teaching today? You need to teach it. It starts in five minutes. That meeting we scheduled for later this week? Actually, it's tomorrow morning. I'm half convinced that if the South ever decides to attack the North, the US forces stationed on the peninsula will find out as the attack gets underway. (Oh, BTW, we decided to launch airstrikes. Didn't anyone tell you?)

I went home (my work day ends at 10pm), juiced myself with caffeine (which is why it's now 3:30am and I'm blogging...), and sat down and typed out a kickass paper. Well, I think it's pretty kickass anyway. If they disagree, well, it wouldn't have worked out between us. And then, because I was feeling awfully go-gettery, I edited the document they'd emailed me - complete with MS Word markups, detailing what I had done, and why.

Then I walked to my local convenience store, only to discover that they aren't actually open 24/7. Damn. And here I've gone and drunk my morning coffee.