I'm in Seoul. my trip to seoul has given me some disturbing revelations that, if you are the slightest bit concerned for me and either 1. have high cholesterol (dad) or 2. are a smoker (mom, patricia) or 3. are a general worrywart stresscase (michelle, parge, dave, aram, john, anyone else) then you need to read this and relax and realize i have all under control. sit down, smoke a pound of marijuana and relax. i am the king.

1. i get my job in andong. my director mr. kim was desperately looking for a foreign teacher because this dude mark flew the coop. i learn that mark had 'committed sexual crimes' against a 6 year old student at the school. naturally i am shocked, these kids are so innocent and nice... well some of them. i find out that mark lives in vancouver and i joke with mr. kim about how i am going to beat him up when i get back to canada. it's all black humor, and mr. kim likes me more because i'm firmly on his side.

2. mr. kim is nice to me. he feeds me. he helps me get a cellphone. i live in his house. since i live in his house, his sweetheart of a grandmother cleans my room for me. it irks me at first, but people have warned me about a different attitude towards privacy here in korea. so i chalk it up to cultural difference and let it slide. it's just weird because i don't think my mother even cleaned my room after i was 3 years old.

3. mr. kim and i become bosom buddies, and eventually he becomes rather omnipresent. i like my 'sean time' and he's always asking me to come see temples, go to dinner, etc. i draw the line at going to the sauna with him because he reveals that there's a whole bunch of nudity. i can't handle getting naked with a bunch of other dudes, especially when i'm about a foot taller and 900 pantone shades whiter than almost every man here. i stick out like a sore thumb on fire. so i politely decline.

4. i go out drinking with mr. kim's younger brother yong-tak. it's fun. we get home, and mr. kim pulls korean rank on him... and goes rank on him. i hear them arguing rather loud in the next room and i bail, go for a walk to show that it's inappropriate for them to argue when i'm in earshot, even when i don't know what they're saying. mr. kim assures me "oh, we both went to law school and we get like that sometimes". yong-tak says "oh, he was getting mad at me for drinking. he says 'why you drinking'?". that was the day of my first and final ESL hangover.

5. i drive to seoul yesterday with my co-worker bill. here's where i digress a bit; bill is 50-something, a vietnam vet, tall and skinny and nerdy in the extreme. he has a korean girlfriend about his age, whom he talks down to. he speaks in ESL to everyone, slow and metered tones, simple sentences, repeats himself alot and adds synonyms so you'll get it. what he doesn't realize is that i started speaking english about 31 years ago and am comfortable with the average discourse.

5a. bill tells me what really happened with mark the molester. mr. kim, or 'mr. monster' as bill calls him, was 4 million won behind in mark's pay. 4 million won is roughly 4000 dollars canadian. mr. kim has mark's (canadian) passport, and after many disputes, they both decide to cut their losses. mark bails and goes back to canada via England (unbeknownst to mr. kim he had dual citizenship), mr. kim decides paying 2 million won to hire me is more cost-effective than paying mark his arrears. i start work, he talks mad shit about mark the 'molester' and all seems well.

5b. bill takes me to meet mr. lee, a gem of a man who put bill up in his apartment when his first job fell through. mr. lee, like most korean men, drinks like a fucking fish. they get progressively drunker, they smoke about 2 packs of cigarettes each, it's 3am, mr. lee's wife is getting really angry, i want to go to sleep, mr. lee's kids are getting angry, i want to go to sleep, bill is getting drunker and louder and more ESL with me and mr. lee, also he tells the same fucking stories like 6 or 7 times. this is perhaps the most profoundly uncomfortable experience i've had in years, perhaps only some of my uncle chris' drunken shenanigans compare in their utter stupidity and imposition. by 10 am the next morning, i'm ready to throw bill out a window. he has maybe a dozen stories which he re-tells in series, much like the shopping network or some shit like that.

5c. what comes of our conversation though is that it becomes abundantly clear that i must be careful around mr. monster. i have to keep up on my agreed pay scheme. i have to be firm. the dude asked me for my passport (illegal), ostensibly for 'safe-keeping' but it's obvious to a 2 year old retard that it's his only insurance that i won't do what mark did. it's also my only insurance since my visa isn't processed yet. so i tell him no, i'm more comfortable with it in my possession, i pat my breast pocket and say 'yeah, i lost it once in thailand. i'm never going to let that happen again'. he knows he has no argument and he shuts his mouth.

6. i ditch bill, to avoid a murder charge in a foreign country. did i mention that people who smoke around other people should be stabbed in the fucking face? sorry mom. bill smokes in his girlfriend's car when she asks him not to and then makes comments about how obedient oriental women are. he is, while an ally, slowly becoming one of the most repugnant human beings i've ever been forced to be around. so i'm off to see some palaces and the art museum. i look for my cellphone, and in the pocket where my passport and plane ticket were - NO PASSPORT. NO PLANE TICKET.

now alot of you know i'm a pretty absent minded dude. it's 3:03 pm, i'm waiting for the 3:40 bus back to andong so i can figure out whether or not i left it at home, whether mr. kim went into my room when i was in the shower and ransacked my jacket pockets, or whether i've just lost the fershlugginer thing.

what makes me suspicious is that bill dished out all sorts of dirt on mr. kim, how he has farted around in paying bill, that 6 foreign teachers have worked at the school in the last year, that 'black suit man' (korean mafia?) comes by to collect money and they have heated discussions (i've witnessed them but they're in korean) about some shit that obviously stresses mr. monster...

and then mr. monster invites me 'to casino'. does this guy have gambling debts? he apparently was a bit of a playboy up until a little while ago. he owned a bar, then he went into partnership in this english school. then his partner bailed and he had to bail him out.

there's so many fucked up things surfacing. all i want to know is that my passport and plane ticket are safe because i have enough resources to bail on korea - i think i've seen enough beautiful stuff and met enough nice people here for it to still be a pleasant memory - and go to japan or taiwan where the economy is apparently way better.

phew! i had to get that out. this may all end up to be a bunch of bill's paranoiac blabbering. he's a drooling retard in many respects... he tried to tell me that "well, the holocaust happened, but i do believe the jews upped the numbers a great deal". i tell him about impeccable nazi record-keeping and he admits that he has no argument and waffles.

i'll wait and see. i guess i find out in about 6 hours if my passport is safe and sound and if i have to put the screws to my boss, who has a history of not paying people, 7 days before my first payday.

happy fucking lunar new year! i need a drink.

(oh yeah, and don't worry about me. if the shit hits the fan, i'll bail. i have quite enough resources and an incurable wanderlust. if my new 500 dollar cellphone doesn't work in japan or taiwan i'll hit it with a brick, take a dump on it and mail it back to mr. kim with a note that says "oh, i forgot to give this back to you!". my name isn't on the 1 year contract, his is. he can't return it in 100 turd-covered pieces).