Six surprising things I learned/realized while living abroad.

After reading these really interesting things that non-Americans couldn’t believe about the US until they actually came here and experienced life in the US for themselves, I felt inspired to write about some of the surprising things that I learned/realized while living overseas.

The US does not have the best healthcare in the world. Nor does it have the worst. With the debate about healthcare that’s been in the news over the past several years, I’ve heard tons of people say things like ‘the US has the best healthcare in the world’ (often followed by ‘and we don’t want Obamacare to ruin it’). I’ve heard tons of people going on about how countries with nationalized healthcare plans have awful healthcare, while what we have is The Best in the World. It’s not.

I haven’t been to every country in the world, and a lot of the places I’ve been to do have worse healthcare systems than the US – often far worse. But not all of them.

South Korea’s national healthcare plan is wonderful. Everyone is on it. If you’re living in South Korea and working legally, you will have access to health insurance. If you don’t have health insurance, the costs are actually still quite affordable. Access to same-day healthcare (for things both minor and major) is easily available without having to go to an ER, and the technology and medical treatments available are state of the art. Koreans simply do not understand why healthcare costs so much in the US, even with health insurance. The cost of healthcare here for uninsured folks in the US is simply inexplicable to them.

On the other hand, if you’ve ever spent time in a developing country, you’ll know that we here in the US are very lucky that at the very least we can go to a clean and competent ER if we fall ill, and the hospital will be obligated to stabilize you at the very least (if you lack insurance). In many countries, this option is unavailable, as the money for modern facilities and trained medical professionals is lacking. We don’t have the best in the world, but we are far from the bottom.

Reliable, fast, frequent, and cheap public transportation is a wonderful thing. We have a terrible public transportation infrastructure in the US. Unless you live in one of a handful of big cities in the US, you are not going to have access to decent public transport. Many large cities (such as Orlando, where I currently reside) do have a semi-decent bus system, but buses come roughly once an hour, are incredibly slow, and you may very well have to walk a long way to reach the nearest stop. This makes life really difficult for people without cars. If you don’t live in a large city, you must have a car, because your only other option is a taxi or bumming a ride off a friend. I never really considered this a problem until I went overseas – specifically to South Korea. I have traveled all over the Korean peninsula by means of bus and train. It’s cheap, it’s fast, it’s easy, and you can do it even if you speak very little Korean. I wish I could hop a train for the cost of a tank of gas and get to my mom’s in a fraction of the time it would take me to drive there, but that’s not an option here. Once, when I was in college, I looked into taking Greyhound home (from TN to FL) for Christmas. It would have taken 25 hours, and it would have cost more than a plane ticket. That’s absurd! Meanwhile, I can get from one end of South Korea to the other in just a few hours (by train) for under $50, and I can do it for far less if I go by bus (although then travel time can be affected by traffic).

American toilets are wonderful. Our toilets enable us to sit down. They have bowls filled with water. I’d never really thought about this before my first trip to Russia, but when you poop into that water, the water covers the smell. In Russia (and in many parts of the former Soviet Union), many of the sit-down toilets in people’s homes, in dorms, and in businesses have a ledge inside the bowl. You poop, and your shit sits on this ledge until you flush, at which point a stream of water washes your poop off the ledge and down the drain. There is no nice covering of water over your poop, which makes the whole experience much stinkier.

However, sit-down toilets are not a world-wide thing. They’re not even a Russia-wide thing. I encountered my first squatter in Moscow at VDNKh. I walked into the only open stall and saw a hole in the floor. Not a ceramic squatter of the kind common in many countries, but a hole in the floor in the center of the stall. I thought that the toilet in that stall was missing (and this may well have been the case), so I retreated and waited for another stall to open. Imagine my surprise when the next woman to enter the bathroom went into that stall and used the hole! Then the next stall opened, and it, too, had only a hole. I have since used squatters ranging from holes in the floor to fancy, gleaming porcelain basins, to holes in a concrete slab over a large sewage pit, to wooden squatters over hand-dug pits. I’m really good at squatting now, but trust me, I much prefer to be able to sit.

Voice mail is not a universal phenomenon. Here in the US, when someone calls your phone it will ring 4-6 times, and then the caller will be shunted off to your voice mail where they can leave a message. In Kyrgyzstan, and South Korea (and, from what I’ve heard, in many other places as well), voice mail does not exist. If someone calls you on your cell, it will ring and ring and ring until they give up and hang up. Not only is there no way to leave a voice message, but there is no limit to the number of rings – there is only a limit to the caller’s patience. And to yours, if you’re trying to avoid answering a call from a certain persistent individual. In both of these countries, it also seems perfectly acceptable to let the phone ring and ring and ring until the person answers it. When I worked for the computer company in Seoul, this was so unbelievably annoying. Someone would be away from their desk, but would have left their phone behind. Someone else would call and it would ring for five minutes. Or more. It’s not like the phones didn’t have caller ID (they did), or like they didn’t accept texts (they did). The caller could have texted a message or simply assumed that the person they were calling would see the missed call and call them back…. But no. Letting the phone ring incessantly seemed to be the thing to do. It drove me nuts.

All Asian kids are not super-studious and well-behaved. The myth that all Asian students are studious and well behaved has been around all of my life, and it’s just not true – at least not in Korea at any rate. Now, granted, Korean children and teens spend far more time in school (both in public school and in private ‘extracurricular’ schools) than their American counterparts; however, for the most part this is due to their parents’ desires, not to theirs. If it were up to them, they’d be at home playing computer games, not shuffling from private school to private school. And well-behaved? Hah. Kids will be kids, and if you put a group of them together, they are going to act like kids. I’ve certainly taught well-behaved Korean children and teens. I’ve also taught some who were total hell-raisers, and many that just wanted to gossip with their friends.

A lot of people in other countries think that there is no poverty in the US. I don’t mean that they think there is less poverty here than in their home country; I’ve met many people who truly believe that there is NO poverty in the US at all. Some people believe me when I explain to them that yes, poverty exists in the US, but some don’t. Below are two examples of conversations I’ve had about this – although I’ve certainly had more than two.

Back in 2000 when I was studying abroad in Russia, I met a young man whose father was, shall we say, connected to the Russian mafia. This kid (and he was 20 or so) wore designer clothes, had a cell phone (back when no one but Russia’s elite had cells), lived in a huge and recently remodeled apartment in the center of St. Petersburg, and drove a Mercedes. He told me one night that his goal in life was to become an American citizen because all Americans were wealthy. I pointed out that he was already wealthy, and that most Americans – myself included – were unable to afford his kind of lifestyle. He continued to state his belief that all Americans were rich, so I explained about how I was only able to go to college (and to Russia) because I had received a full scholarship, and that I lived with my mom, who was working part-time and making very little money. He became furious and began shouting at me that I was lying. He claimed that I was just saying that because I didn’t want foreigners coming to the US and becoming rich.

One day this summer, while I was in Kyrgyzstan, my host mother offhandedly said, “Well, there aren’t any poor people in America.” She was really, genuinely surprised when I said that actually yes, there are. She said, “But I never see poor people in any American TV shows or movies!” She was really amazed when I explained to her that we do have a poverty problem, that there are many people who are homeless or struggling to make ends meet. While she was far more accepting of this than the Russian guy I met back in 2000, I did hear her tell several of her friends in an incredulous voice, “Did you know that [Annie] says there are actually poor people in America?”

Analyzing research on native-speaking English teachers in Korea

Sorry for the lack of posts of late. The grad school work load finally kicked in, and I've been up to my ears in papers, projects, presentations, volunteering (required for one of my classes), and articles. One of my assignments is to read and review several published, peer-reviewed articles on a topic of my choosing. As there were no such articles on my first choice (native speaking English teachers in rural Kyrgyzstan), I went with a topic for which there is indeed published literature: native speaking English teachers in South Korea. Unfortunately, the three articles that I've analyzed thus far are nothing short of abysmal. Normally I wouldn't waste your time with information on things I've read and then rated as crap, but given that a lot of my readers  either are or have been native speaking English teachers in South Korea, I figured some of you might be interested.

The first article (and the best of the bunch so far), Globalization and native English speakers in English Program in Korea (EPIK) by Mihyon Jeon proposed to examine the perceived legitimacy of the native-speaking English teachers hired by EPIK. Jeon sought to examine the views that both the native-speaking teachers held of their legitimacy as teachers in South Korea, as well as the views that their Korean counterparts held of them, by attending an EPIK conference (at which several native-speaking teachers presented), as well as by conducting one-on-one interviews with several teachers (Korean and native speakers) and EPIK coordinators. The following four conclusions were reached:

1. While the Korean government places emphasis on the importance of the native English speaking teachers hired by EPIK, Korean English teachers and students often do not view EPIK’s native speaking English teachers as important. 

2. Korean teachers often did not have either time or desire to work closely with the native speaking teachers.

3. Native speaking teachers did not feel that they had been fully integrated into the school curriculum, resulting in feelings of isolation and marginalization.

4. Native speaking teachers felt as though they were valued for their "entertainment value" (with several teachers describing themselves as "performing monkeys"), as opposed to their work as educators.

5. Classroom management problems presented a great difficulty to EPIK teachers, as students did not consider them to be real teachers, and therefore did not respond to them as such.

The sample size for this study met the minimum threshold for being considered generalizable in terms of the number of native English speaking EPIK employees; however, the number of Koreans sampled did not meet the criteria for generalizability.

The second, and certainly the most absurd of the three articles, was Global fatigue: Transnational markets, linguistic capital, and Korean-American male English teachers in South Korea by Songpae Cho. The purpose of this article was to examine the reasons why Korean-American males move to South Korea for the purpose of teaching English, to examine their perceptions of their value in South Korea, and to examine the views that South Koreans hold of them.

The "study" (if you can call it that) featured a series of interviews conducted by the author with his coworkers, an individual that he "met in the elevator" and another whom he described as "an Apgujeong matron" - hardly a representative sample by any stretch of the imagination. The results of this study were as follows:

1. Korean-American males come to South Korea "on a whim" often with no teaching experience. (I'd say the same can be said of most native-speaking English teachers in South Korea, although like this article, I have no actual research to back up my statement.)

2. Korean-American males remain in South Korea longer than their female counterparts due to their perceived desirability in the Korean patriarchal society. Cho basically says that Korean-American males are more valued sexually in Korea than in the US due to their elite status as American English speakers, and the fact that Korean males are at the top of the food chain in Korea (while they’re emasculated in American culture). 

3. Koreans are suspicious of Korean-American male English teachers, wondering if perhaps they did something wrong in the United States, leading them to seek work overseas. (As far as I can tell, the only person who expressed this view was the aforementioned "Apgujeong matron.")

4. Koreans think that Korean-Americans do not speak English as well as white Americans.

5. Korean-American males become anxious both about staying in Korea (due to the above two reasons) and about returning to the United States, due to “the fear of getting older and becoming less marketable in the U.S.” 

I think my favorite part of this article was its repeated use of the term "English prostitute." One of Cho's interviewees described himself as feeling rather like an "English prostitute" - and then Cho went on to use this analogy several more times in the paper, even though doing so was totally unnecessary. 

The third article, The novice, the native, and the nature of language teacher expertise by Ji-eun Shin and David Kellogg, was the only article to involve a statistical study. Unfortunately, out of the thousands of native and non-native English teachers on the Korean peninsula, the study focused on one native and three non-native English speaking teachers. If you need a minimum of one percent of the population (in this case the native English teacher and non-native English teacher populations) to achieve generalizability, what is even the point of conducting research that is so far below the generalizability threshold that it's not even funny? When you consider that a lot of work actually went into this pointless study, the mind boggles. 

The purpose of this article was to quantitatively analyze and compare the teaching talk of native English speaking teachers and non-native English speaking teachers, as well as to compare the amount of English spoken by students in classes taught by native and non-native English teachers. The one native speaking English teacher chosen for this study had neither studied education nor worked as a teacher prior to coming to Korea at the beginning of the study. In contrast, the three Korean English teachers chosen all had education degrees and two to five years teaching experience. One of the three Korean teachers was also Ji-eun Shin, one of the authors of this study.

Fourteen classes over a six month period were recorded, transcribed, and statistically analyzed to look for various things such as number of times each teacher spoke, complexity of their utterances, grammatical structure/correctness, and amount of English/Korean spoken by students in class. Well, in this one native speaking English teacher's class, Korean was spoken more, she spoke English less, and she had more grammatical errors than her Korean counterparts. The authors then attempt to generalize their results, because obviously this shows that Koreans are better English teachers than native speakers! Dude, really? Have you seen your sample size?

The Korean “Work Ethic”

"I saw classrooms in which a third of the students slept while the teacher continued lecturing, seemingly unfazed. Gift stores sell special pillows that slip over your forearm to make desktop napping more comfortable. This way, goes the backward logic, you can sleep in class — and stay up late studying." (From this article in TIME Magazine, September 2011.)

As someone who has spent a lot of time working in the “shadow education system” of Korea – the private, after-hours ‘cram schools’ or hagwons (학원) – I am no stranger to the notion of Korean children staying out studying until quite late. When I was in middle school, my bed time was 9:30pm. At the hagwon where I taught in both 2006-2007 and 2010-2011, my last middle school class of the day finished at 10pm. I had accustomed myself to the notion that Korean children have a vastly different childhood from mine and that of most American kids. Yet somehow I always pictured Korean mom and dad relaxing at home, having dinner, watching TV, and enjoying having some alone time while the kiddies were off at the hagwon. Granted, I grew up with a father who knocked off work at 5pm and was home by 5:15pm pretty much every day. I should have realized that the lives of Korean adults would be just as drastically different from their American counterparts as the lives of Korean children.

Take a look at the pictures below. They're of a miniature husband pillow. It has a slot in it into which one can insert one’s arm. This makes it far more comfortable to sleep on if you’re somewhere not particularly conducive to getting comfy: desk, bus, train, airplane. I personally think this is a fantastic invention. It’s the kind of pillow referred to in the TIME article that I quoted above. 

I bought this pillow when I was planning to go on an overnight bus trip. I didn’t buy it at a kids’ store, or at a shop near a school, or at one of the big Wal-Mart type shopping centers that offer everything under the sun. I bought it at an office supply store in Yeouido – one located directly across the street from my former office building. Every single one of the people in my department had a similar pillow, and made regular use of it.

Sleeping on the job? Well, yes. And no. Not exactly. Take a gander at this very informative article on the work culture in South Korea.  It’s entitled “the world’s hardest working countries” – although I’d say “longest working” instead of hardest. There’s a difference… Unfortunately, the Koreans have yet to realize this.

Our work hours at my former company in Yeouido were from 9am-6pm. We were encouraged to work overtime – although overtime work was always *unpaid.* However, if you stayed until 8pm, you’d get reimbursed ₩7000 (roughly $7) for dinner (keep in mind, this is in Yeouido, where $7 might get you a bowl of bibimbap), and if you stayed until 11pm, you’d get reimbursed for the cost of a taxi ride home. So for an extra 5 hours of work, and – depending on how long a taxi ride you’ve got – you’d probably be reimbursed $10-$15. Hardly an incentive… yet I had coworkers brag about receiving upwards of ₩2,000,000 ($1700) in reimbursements. Granted, that’s over a fairly long time, but still, that's a lot of bibimbap.

Now, I have nothing at all against working overtime when there’s work that needs to be done. You’ve got a Wednesday morning deadline for your project and it’s not finished by 6pm on Tuesday? You stay late. You’ve got an emergency situation that needs to be handled right then? You stay late. But if there are no pressing deadlines, no emergency situations, nothing that absolutely must be done right then? I say go on home…. but that is most definitely NOT the Korean way.

I never stayed past 6:15pm. This is because I never had any pressing emergencies or un-met deadlines to contend with. And because I’d been working for 8 hours straight and needed to give my brain a rest.

And that’s where we come to the big difference between me and my Korean co-workers in terms of work ethic. From 9am-6pm (except for my lunch hour), I worked. True, I may have sent several personal emails to friends over the course of the day, but I can multitask like a fiend. I would work steadily for 8 hours a day, taking only the occasional bathroom break. Meanwhile, my coworkers (including supervisors) would take lengthy smoke breaks, take 15-30 minute naps, spend time on YouTube of Naver or Facebook… and then stay at the office until 8pm or 11pm.

Now I don’t want you to think that my coworkers were lazy – they weren’t at all. In fact, they were all very hard workers.   They just dragged out everything they did, and napped, and watched sports on YouTube or whatever so that they could put in extra hours and show what good, hardworking employees they are. I was lucky – and I suspect that this has a lot to do with the fact that I’m not Korean – that I was never pressured to stay late. Meanwhile, there seemed to be a lot of pressure on my coworkers to stay late every single day, especially the younger/newer employees, who needed to “prove” to the company that they were hardworking.

Here’s an appropriate quote from the article I mentioned above:

"It’s the culture," says Lee. "We always watch what the senior boss thinks of our behavior. So it’s very difficult to finish at a fixed time." Leaving at the official time of 6 p.m. could mean not getting a promotion or raise.

This whole concept just boggles my mind. I personally would much rather work for 8 hours – and do my job well for 8 hours – and then leave and get one with my life than drag out my assignments and stretch 8 hours worth of work into 13 to prove that I’m “hardworking.” I just don’t get it. Of course, I also didn’t get my promised mid-contract raise.

The de-facto work schedule seemed to take a huge physical toll on a lot of my coworkers, who often looked like they desperately needed a good night’s sleep. And don’t even get me started on how they keep up this absurd ever-present practice no matter how sick they get. Surely well-rested, relaxed, healthy employees would be more efficient than exhausted, stressed, and often sickly ones? But it’s not the Korean way.

My Adventures in Korean Business

If you follow this blog, you know that I’ve just returned home from a six month stint as a businesswoman in a firm in Yeouido – “the Wall Street of South Korea” – located in the heart of Seoul. Over the years (and I’m getting up there now…) I’ve worked in the government, education, and non-profit sectors, and now I can add big business to that list. This was my fifth trip to Korea, but as I had worked as a teacher for three of the four previous trips, and as a US government employee for the fourth, and as I had spent the bulk of all four trips in Daegu, working at a prestigious South Korean firm in Yeouido was a very big change.

I really wanted to love my job, or at least like it enough to stick it out for several years. The salary was fantastic, and the people were (for the most part) quite pleasant to work with. Even those who weren’t so great to work with were pretty fantastic people outside of the work environment. Unfortunately – as you can probably guess by the fact that I did not seek to extend my six month contract – I discovered that big business (in general, and this one in particular) is simply not for me.

Fortunately, this job made me realize that what I really love is teaching. Days of staring numbly at a computer screen, thinking about new and creative ways to promote products about which I really could not care less really made me miss my students. I cared about my students. Sure, there are always some bad apples – sometimes you get a whole class or two of rotten ones – but I always cared about how they learned, how they progressed.  Remember the ex-job? That was my venture into the non-profit sector. I stuck it out for eight months under the worst boss imaginable… because I cared deeply about the job we did and the cause we served. But this job? I discovered early on that I really did not care about it at all. And the fact that they paid me well did not compensate for the absolute lack of interest that my job held for me. I found myself wishing I were still in the classroom, wishing I’d taken the job I was offered in Ukraine at less than a quarter of my Yeouido salary.

I’d known for some time that I really enjoyed teaching English to speakers of other languages, but there’s only so far a person can go in that career without a Master’s degree. Graduate school is expensive, and I really did not want to find myself grossly in debt and receiving a teacher’s salary… but after a little more than a month in Yeouido, I knew that what I wanted to be doing was teaching. I decided to do what I love… and I certainly did not love promoting products of questionable value with the almighty dollar (or in this case, the won) as the bottom line. I decided to bite the bullet, and applied to five graduate programs. I was accepted into all five, and my top choice has offered me an excellent funding package. I’ll begin earning my MA in TESOL in the fall.

I blogged very little about my job while I was living and working in Seoul, as it’s never wise to blog about your job – especially if you have negative things to say. Now that my contract has finished and I am back in the US, I’ve decided to write about my time working in Yeouido. Be warned – this post is long. However: it’s not as long as it could be. There were days when I thought with great pleasure about the absolutely scathing things I could write about the place once I was gone. And I definitely *could.* I’m not going to, though, because despite the things that I disliked about my job, I liked my coworkers a lot. Even the one guy that I spent much of my time at odds with – he and I are actually friends. Out of respect for my former coworkers – and not wanting them to suffer any repercussions from my blogging – I won’t be anywhere near as detailed or as scathing as I could be. Additionally, I’ll be referring to the firm as Company X throughout my post, and I won’t be giving any specific details about the kind of products and services Company X offers. Enjoy!

The Koloss Korean Business Model at Company X

Have any of you read the Mistborn trilogy by Brandon Sanderson? If you have, please excuse the following simplistic description of the Koloss. For those of you who haven’t read these books, the Koloss are humanoid monsters. They want to be human, although they lack the capacity to understand what it means to be human. They know that humans wear clothes, so they wear clothes… although they wear them in such a grossly ill-fitting and incorrect manner that they may as well be naked. They know that humans do work in exchange for money… so despite the fact that their “society” has no need of money, they will work for humans in exchange for coins, which they covet but do not use. The Koloss know that humans live in houses… so periodically they will camp inside a house or a tent, often demolishing the structure in the process, as they don’t really understand the concept. In many ways Company X is to international business what the Koloss of the Mistborn trilogy are to humans.

My first couple of weeks at Company X were stressful, but pleasant, as all of my coworkers went out of their way to help me and to be friendly. I found the work at times dull and tedious, and at other times very difficult, as it dealt with a subject I’d previously had little to no experience with. However, as I was learning how to do a new job, I expected that it would get easier with time. I actually found myself thinking of spending two or three years there at a minimum – after all, they were paying me fairly well, and it would look quite good on my resume.

When I was interviewed for the position, I was told that my job would consist mainly of editing texts written by non-native English speakers, and that occasionally I would write reports. It turned out to be the other way around: my job involved a LOT of writing, with the occasional bit of editing thrown in. Now, I enjoy writing, and wouldn’t have minded that in the least had the things I had been asked to write been sensible. Instead, many of my writing assignments seemed to come from the Koloss School of Business:

“International businesses have white papers! Anonymity, write a white paper on Product Z.”

“Sure, no problem. Please give me some facts on Product Z.”

“Here are 3 vague facts about Product Z. Please base your white paper on this.”

“Is there any more information on Product Z?”

“No.”

“Even in Korean?”

“No. What’s the problem? You’re a technical writer! Write a white paper!”

I only wish I were exaggerating.

“International businesses have case studies! Anonymity, write a case study on Company B’s use of Product Z.”

“Sure, no problem. Please give me some facts on which to base the case study.”

“Here are all the facts you need: Company B has Problem Q. Product Z solves Problem Q. Company B uses Product Z and no longer has Problem Q.”

“But do you have any actual facts? Details on how Problem Q was affecting Company B? Details on *how* Product Z has been able to solve Problem Q? Details on how this has affected Company B’s performance?”

“No. We don’t have anything like that. But what’s the problem? You’re a technical writer! Write a case study!”

I only wish I were exaggerating.

I saw a lot of Company X’s Korean language “case studies.” They really did follow the above format. The notion that “FAMOUS COMPANY “C” USES OUR PRODUCT SO YOU SHOULD, TOO!” was prevalent throughout their entire domestic marketing plan. And the thing is, it’s working.

I’d like to ask those of you who are familiar with Korea to think of the major Korean companies, the famous Korean brands. Which ones just popped into your head? I’d be willing to bet that whatever company you just thought of is a customer of Company X. Their client list is really quite impressive. In addition to most of the big name businesses on the peninsula, the Korean government and many Korean universities are also their customers.

Company X – with its peer-pressure marketing techniques has managed to saturate the domestic market, and has reached the point where it must either branch out overseas or stagnate. They’ve chosen to branch out overseas, and they’re taking their peer-pressure marketing plan global. I’m not sure how this kind of marketing will fare in other parts of East Asia, but my protestations that fact-less white papers and case studies would not fly in the western world (which is, after all, why they hired me) fell completely on deaf ears.

I wrote four white papers in six months, ranging from 12-15 pages each. I wrote at least twenty “case studies.” Eventually I stopped asking for facts; I knew there were none to be had. Believe me, my bullshitting skills developed at an exponential rate.

Company X is trying to become a “global company” – they desperately want to enter the Australian and American markets. But they really seem to lack the kind of general Western business knowledge that they need to possess in order to make this happen, and they seemed quite unwilling to listen to me when I pointed out that just because this technique works in Korea does not at all mean that it will be successful world-wide. Sigh.

This cluelessness on the part of Company X regarding how to do business definitely soured my attitude towards the place. As did our products. They were okay. Some of our products were better than others. They did most of what we claimed they did… but not all. It’s hard to feel passionate when you realize that in some cases the company is exaggerating their products to the point of sorta-kinda telling a falsehood or two for marketing purposes.

The company’s products are advertised by a bunch of buzz-words: Next-Generation. Intelligent. User-Intuitive. Extensible. Scalable. The New Paradigm. As mentioned above, they tend to be rather big on adjectives, and rather small on facts. There are, however, a small handful of facts that they bandied about so much that I did not for a moment credit their veracity… until I learned that, well, they weren’t totally factual.

In the field that one of Company X’s products occupies, there are Ten Things which are very important for a product to be able to handle. Not all companies in this field have products that can handle the Ten Things. Those that do tend to make a big deal of it; it’s a good advertising tactic. Pretty much everything ever written about one of Company X’s products talks about its ability to handle the Ten Things. I assumed that it really could do this.

Then in November I learned that the product only covered nine of the Ten Things. I pointed out that to say that we covered all ten was false advertising – that it was lying – that we needed to say we covered nine of the ten, that we needed to stop saying we covered the Ten Things. The response was, “Your facts don’t need to be so specific. Besides, our competitors probably only cover nine of the ten, too.”

There is a type of compliance that’s also recognized in the field in which Company X operates. Let’s call it Y Compliance. They claim to have Y Compliance Certification. Apparently they’ve actually run into some problems from saying this; they had to issue a press-release clarifying what they meant at one point. They have a certificate from an organization NOT AFFILIATED with the Y Compliance folks, which has tested the product and proclaimed it in compliance with part of the Y Compliance requirements. And yet “Y Compliant!”  and “Y Certified!” (etc) appear on all documents pertaining to this product. Not a complete lie, but definitely misleading.

Don’t even get me started on the one “easy-to-use, user-intuitive” product that was an absolute nightmare to use.

Periodically, companies/organizations/governments that were interested in purchasing a product like one of the ones we sold, and would submit a list of requirements. In theory, we were supposed to review the list, and mark which items we could do, which we could do partially, and which we couldn’t do. Whenever these were submitted in English (from potential overseas customers), I would be asked to take care of it. I would also be told to mark ‘yes’ or ‘partially,’ but never ‘no.’

Except that often it *was* no. I remember one list of about 150 requirements, about 35 of which our product did not fulfill. I completed the form honestly, and submitted it to my supervisor. Before he submitted it to his supervisor, he’d reduced the number of nos to something like five. I questioned him about it, flat out saying, “You’re lying to them!” His response? “I’m not lying. I’m promoting our product.” He also said, “We’re in pre-sales. Our job is to be confident and never say anything negative about our products. It’s the job of the people in post-sales to say ‘I’m sorry’ a lot.”

Yeah.

For the sake of the employees of Company X, I would like the place to succeed in becoming a successful global company… but they still have rather a way to go before they meet this goal. 

The Journey Home

I am still jet-lagged, tired, and ridiculously sore from carting the critters and all my crap across a couple of continents, but I figured I should post to update those of you who aren't my facebook friends.

Two of my former co-workers, HM and JY, went with me to the airport. It makes carting all your critters and crap around much easier when you have two dudes who are more than willing to do it for you. If only they'd been around for my layover, when I had to maneuver it all through Customs and Immigration under my own steam. Ahh well. Anyhow, the check-in procedure went really smoothly. There were no problems with the reservations for the critters (despite the booking nightmare), although I was very disturbed to learn that the free checked luggage limit is now one bag instead of two. As such, I had to pay not only for Charlie and Mochi to travel ($200 each), but I had to pay $75 for my second suitcase. Oh well.

JY, holding Charlie in her bag, and me - Incheon International Airport
Mochi getting checked in.
Me and Mochi at check-in

Mochi was really, really terrified when we got to the airport - he was shaking like a leaf and looked completely miserable. Charlie, in contrast, was just pissed off. Mochi calmed down when HM bought him some beef and squid jerky, but I was really concerned about how he would react once he was loaded onto the plane. Charlie got to travel in the cabin with me, but Mochi was below with the baggage. I worried about him the entire flight. He came through unscathed though, and was totally thrilled to see me on the other side.

Charlie bit me going through security in Seoul. If you're carrying a pet in the cabin with you, you have to take it out of its travel bag, and carry it through the metal detector while its bag runs through the x-ray machine. Charlie was both pissed off and scared, and they took FOREVER to scan her bag. Finally, when they pushed it out, and it came thump-thump-thumping down the rollers, she panicked and went into full-feral-fight-and-flight mode. I held on for dear life, even when she sunk her teeth into my thumb. Then, after shoving her back into her bag, I calmly stuffed my thumb into my pocket and pretended it wasn't bleeding. Wasn't so sure they'd allow a bitey beast onto the plane. Other than that, Charlie was good. She didn't pee in her bag until just one hour out from our final destination. (I was really worried that there might be a cat-pee incident midway across the Pacific, but no.)

I totally lucked out on the airplane. Not only did I get a window seat, but the seat next to me was empty. I was able to curl up and go to sleep for a few hours, and I could stretch out when I was awake. I haven't had that much room on an international flight since 2000. It was fantastic.

We're home now, and I'm trying to kick my ass into overcoming jet-lag, although flying from Korea to the US is always rough.

Charlie and Mochi on their new bed :-)

Tying up loose ends.

Today was my last full day in Korea. I spent it the way I've spent most of this past week: packing, cleaning, and running pre-departure errands. Tuesday involved multiple trips to the vet for health checks and travel papers. Wednesday was post office day - lugging four boxes of crap that wouldn't fit into my suitcases down to the nearest PO. Wednesday was mostly cleaning and packing, although I also lugged ₩60,000 worth of ₩100 coins to the bank to cash them in. Today I took my extra pet carrier (stuffed with all the excess pet things I won't be bringing with me) across town to donate to Animal Rescue Korea. Then I went and stocked up on birth control as the US seems to be nonsensically spiraling down the pill-is-evil rabbit hole. Bags are packed, and the apartment is clean. And now I'm just kicking my heels. 15 hours til I leave my moldy shithole of an apartment for good.

Tomorrow, two of my former coworkers will be helping me to cart two ginormous suitcases, a dog, a cat, and a carry-on bag off to the airport. Assuming all goes according to plan, I should be home about 25 hours later. It's going to be a long day. The critters are resting up:

Pet Travel Papers!

There's something absolutely wonderful about lying in bed, sandwiched between a cat on one side and a dog on the other, listening to the rain pound against the window, and knowing that you don't have to get up and go to work... that is, it was wonderful until I became fully conscious enough to realize that the weather was utter shite on the day I needed to make two different trips to Itaewon with my critters to finalize their travel paperwork. Yuck. 

By around 11:30, the rain had stopped (although it never cleared; the entire day was cold, dreary, and blanketed in thick fog), so I shoved Charlie into her bag and hopped the subway for Itaewon to go to the Chungwha Animal Hospital. Even though there are plenty of vets in the Hongdae area where I live, including one right around the corner from my apartment, Chungwha had been highly recommended to me as a place where the vets and staff spoke English, and where they were experienced with the paperwork needed for overseas travel with pets. I'd been there once before, right after I got Mochi (and it's where I bought his crate), and I was definitely impressed. I'd also read the sign about how they were closed for lunch from 12-1. Which I forgot. Yep, Charlie and I walked in right as they all went on their lunch break. I figure it's good practice for Saturday, when she's going to have to be in her bag for a good 24 hours. Or at least that's what I told her (and myself) at the time. Once their lunch break ended, I was able to get Charlie's health check, health certificate, and rabies certificate quickly and painlessly before heading back home.

Chungwha Animal Hospital lobby

Charlie, waiting to see the vet.

Then came the more challenging part. In theory you're not supposed to take animals on the subway, but I've seen plenty of people with tiny dogs and the occasional cat-in-a-bag on there. As long as you can pop it into a bag and pretend you don't have an animal, there doesn't seem to be any problem. Mochi, while not a big dog by any stretch of the imagination, is too large to pop into a bag. I'd also discovered on my previous trip to Chunghwa with Mochi that a lot of taxi drivers will speed off the instant they noticed I had a dog with me. Obviously I was going to have to take a taxi to Itaewon... so...

I wrapped Mochi in a hooded sweater, with the hood over his head, and held him on my hip with his little paws around my neck. I should have gotten someone to take a picture, because it totally looked like I was carrying a toddler, bundled up against the weather (the people at the vet clinic agreed). I got a taxi both there and back with no problems, although both drivers seemed quite surprised about halfway to the destination when they discovered that my child had four legs and was covered with fur. 

Mochi - who had been so shy and terrified on his first trip to the vet was wagging his tail and playing with everyone. It's so wonderful to see how much his personality has developed, now that he's become confident.  And speaking of his development - it's a good thing that he has learned to love going for walks. On the taxi ride back, I made it just past Sangsu (one subway stop from Hongdae), when I knew I needed to get out ASAP or I was going to be violently ill. Stupid car sickness. Could have been avoided if I had sat in the front, but that would have given the whole dog-in-a-sweater trick away right at the get go. Anyway, Mochi and I had a nice long walk through Hongdae proper to get home. Tuesday afternoons aren't the busiest time for Hongdae by far, but there were still plenty of people for Mochi to show off for. He totally struts.

Mochi at the vet, where he got his health check, health certificate, and rabies certificate.

A Day in Daegu

I took the train down to Daegu this morning to spend one last day with my friend G and her family before heading back to the US (I leave next Saturday!!). It was rather a lazy day, as we just hung out and chatted and ate (and as the weather was pretty crap down there), but it was a good day. Baby S was very excited to see me, and kept saying my name over and over and over. At one point, he woke up from his nap feeling very cranky, and didn't want his mom... he wanted me. Babies scare me, and usually the feeling is mutual, so this was a bit odd :-)

Overcast, dreary, and cold in Daegu.
G and Baby S
Baby S
Baby S

Me with Baby S after his nap.

Death of an Onion

Remember my onion that I planted back in December? For an onion that was destined for someone's belly, it had a pretty good run:

It didn't get as much sunlight as it probably needed, since whenever I put it by the window, Charlie immediately showed way too much interest in it. However, as long as it sat atop the fridge, Charlie paid it no mind.
Then I put the litter box atop Mochi's crate to keep Mochi from snacking on cat shit. Take a look at the onion in the upper right to see how big it had gotten...
Once Charlie had the dog crate as a convenient stepladder to the top of the fridge, the onion began to shrink in size. Can't imagine why.

The poor thing really is on its last legs.

Out and about with Mochi

I'm so thrilled that Mochi likes to go for walks now. It's so much fun walking around with him. He's fascinated by the great outdoors, and just wants to sniff and investigate everything. He's still timid - and cars suddenly speeding by or people carrying large items scare him - but in general he's gotten quite comfortable being outside on a leash. Almost everyone who sees him calls him cute, or talks to him, or wants to pet him, and he marches along with his head held high and his tail curling up over his back. It's such a change from the terrified little guy I got back in January. He still doesn't do stairs though. Granted, for a dog whose legs are super short and whose back is super long, I can see how stairs would be a bit daunting, but it would be nice not to have to carry him out of the building and back in. I managed to convince him to climb a flight of stairs outside today, but  they were rather shallow - and even so it took forever. When we got back to the apartment, he just planted his feet in front of the staircase and waited to be picked up. But hey, we're walking around outside! Baby steps. Here are my cellphone pics from today's walk:

We found a rather bizarre collection of statuary...
...guarded by a distant relative.
He wanted to play, but his leash was too short.
Mochi was interested, too.
Slowly climbing the stairs.

Mochi and I: Out and about in Seoul :-)

Because every blog needs two Olleh posts, right?

Yesterday I brought you Darth Vader in Seoul, courtesy of Olleh KT. Now, pre-Darth (and back when I had a TV), you couldn't go a single commercial break without seeing a 'do do do OLLEH!' commercial... specifically this commercial:

The tune's pretty catchy, and I can't see or hear 'KT' without singing 'do do do OLLEH!' to myself... although I never got what the very non-Korean black guy running around Seoul had to do with cell phone service. About as much as Darth Vader and his Trek universe WARP, I guess. Anyway, it never occurred to me that the tune wasn't actually created for KT advertising purposes. I never would have guessed that it had a life anywhere outside of Korea. Then it popped up on my friend G's Pandora station. So now we know: the Olleh KT 'do do do OLLEH' song is Chelsea Dagger by The Fratellis.

That whole Darth Vader in Yeouido thing...

So, you remember back in December when my supervisor saw Darth Vader and a whole herd of Storm Troopers marching around Yeouido and didn't call me right away? Well, I now have the answer to why they were marching around Seoul (and I suspect that if I had a TV I'd have known about this ages ago): They were filming for the Olleh LTE WARP commercials. Olleh is Korea Telecom's mobile service.  

My problem with this has nothing to do with Darth Vader seeming like a pansy (although, really!) - it has to do with the whole WARP thing. I mean, I understand that WARP can be made to look like WARS in the Star Wars font super easily. But there was no warp in the Star Wars universe, dammit. Warp drive is a Star Trek thing. 

Mochi's first walk!

As you may or may not know, Mochi has been terrified of going outside. Luckily, he's pee-pad trained. Prior to today, if we went outside, he'd pretty much plant his feet and quake, refusing to go anywhere. Not sure what made today different (although it was above freezing...), but he actually walked all the way around the block with me, and even seemed to be enjoying himself, sniffing at everything and trying to play with his reflection in store windows. I snapped a few pics with my cell:

Critter Pictures

Today was supposed to be sunny and warmish (mid 40sF). I woke up around 9:30 to discover fog and drizzle. By 11:30, the fog had lifted and the drizzle had stopped, but it was still overcast, dreary, and barely above freezing. I had planned to spend the day out taking photos, but the day was thoroughly uninspiring. So I spent the day as I've spent many a day recently: hanging out with the critters. The following photos were shot with my cell phone.

Weird shit seen every day

Every day when I'm riding the number nine train from Dangsan to Yeouido, I get treated to what I consider a rather odd thing to be in regular rotation on city public transportation: The Korean cartoon 'Larva' - a combination of cute, disgusting, and gruesome. Very Korean. You don't have to know any Korean as they're silent. The ones below are just a few of the first ones that popped up on YouTube - there's plenty more where that came from if you're into it. I personally have mixed feelings.

It's closer than you think...

I have literally been counting the days for MONTHS now. One of the first things I do when I get to work is click on the calendar on my computer and count how many work days I have left. I started this back in November. Every morning I have a debate with myself: do I count today or not? I mean, if I've only been at work for four minutes, I should really add today into my tally, but I always prefer the lower number. It makes me feel better. This morning I decided I wasn't counting today, and therefore only had eight more work days. The rest of this work week, then next week Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday (as Thursday is the national holiday of Independence Movement Day), and finally, my last day of work on Monday, March 5th. Then, after lunch I learned that in some sort of miraculous occurrence, my company is having a company holiday on March 2nd - giving everyone a four day weekend! After which I still have to come back to work for that one final day... But hey, seven more work days!! And 19 days total left in Korea. 

Ten more work days!

I'm quite relieved to only have ten more work days left. In celebration, I've made my own version of this meme, based on my life for the past six months.

Okay, maybe I don't actually faceplant into my keyboard all the time,
but I sure as hell feel like doing that. A lot. 
And in case you're curious about where I've spent the past six months,
here I am in my office.

How to keep your dog from snacking out of the litter box

It took a few weeks, but Mochi - like most dogs - eventually discovered the tasty snacks in the covered pink box next to the fridge. Yeah. The dog was snacking on cat shit straight out of the litter box.  Yuck. The solution, suggested by my friend G:

That's the litter box on top of Mochi's crate. I wasn't sure that Charlie would be willing to jump up there to use it, but luckily for me...

Bukchon? Meh.

Today was pretty gorgeous out, so I figured that cold weather be damned, I was going to go out and take some photos. I decided to go to Bukchon Hanok Village, next to Gyeongbok Palace. To be honest, I didn't find it that interesting. The neighborhood reminded me of the more run-down parts of Banyawol (the area on the outskirts of Daegu where I used to live: see here, here, and here for pictures) - only instead of going to seed or being replaced by brand new high-rises, the traditional Korean homes (hanok) have been spruced up, and the area, while still mainly residential, has become somewhat of a tourist trap. The place is home to tons of guest houses located inside hanok, as well as a large variety of places where one can make and/or buy traditional Korean crafts. There were also a lot of art galleries and museums. I have to say that I give Seoul props for encouraging the sprucing up of the more traditional neighborhoods, instead of letting them crumble and decay until they're replaced by high-rises, but I really just wasn't all that into Bukchon. Not being into craft-making or art, not being in need of a guest house, and having seen plenty of hanok (lived in and not) before, there wasn't much about Bukchon that was all that appealing to me. I think that were I new to Korea I probably would've enjoyed it more. As it was, it was a lot of stuff I'd seen before combined with things I just didn't find all that interesting. Still, it was a nice day to be outside, and I got a few decent photos.

I heard barking and turned around - a relative of Mochi was atop this wall!

You could see Seoul Namsan Tower from certain spots.

National Folk Museum of Korea @ Gyeongbok Palace as seen from Bukchon
Daewoo Matiz police car!! (And you know I love me some Matiz...)
There's a new (and huge) art museum under construction at the nexus of Bukchon and Gyeongbok, called the UUL National Art Museum. It has an... interesting faux-graffiti advertising on the walls surrounding the construction site. More info here.

At the intersection between Bukchon and Gyeongbok Palace (which I blogged about here if you're wondering why it doesn't feature in this post).