so, i didn't get paid. but here's the deal.

i started work on january 12. if i get paid today, i don't get paid for the new year holiday. if i get paid on the 12 of february, i do get the extra 3 days. i can survive until the 12th, so i can wait. it doesn't seem like he's trying to fuck me in any way.

at this point everything seems above the board... he does have to pay two other people he owes lots of money to, who need to be paid for shit he owed them before i even got here. if he borrows from peter to pay paul, i mean... if he hums and hawws about paying them so he can pay me, which is sometimes the case, then they get fucked. i don't want that. so i'll wait until the 12th.

i'm still fine. i don't think i'm taking that much of a risk; no more than being here in the first place anyways. he's doing his best to be up-front with me, i think mainly because i know about his 'past'. really, i don't know mark and i don't know mr. kim. so trusting either dude is a gamble. i'm still on the defensive though.

ok. so the panic attacks have subsided. all is well for the most part.

clearly privacy means something totally different in korea. when hannah lived here, her classes were videotaped. in almost every contract i've seen, there has been a clause that your director has keys for your apartment and can inspect it at any time. so when yong-tak came in to work yesterday and said "oh, i saw you were looking mark's post on eslcafe.com" it explained why monster came home the night before and said, out of the fucking blue...

"sean, if you are worried about getting paid on time, don't worry. i will pay you on time. we like you, the students love you, we are happy you are here".

of course i'm freaked. why would he know? yong tak came in to work the day after he said that and i was convinced he was examining the history of the school computer... had i forgotten to clear it? is he snooping or running some spy software? he's usually in the school 2 hours after i am.

what happened? here's what happened. i had printed the post up for bill, and he left it on his coffee table. yong-tak read it, and since bill's situation is as precarious as mine, bill just said "i don't know what that's about, sean found it on some website... it sounds CRAZY!!!" which is exactly what i said when yong-tak... and then monster confronted me about it. monster even printed the damn thing up and said "oh, i read it, and i just think it is funny". i made it clear with the guy... "well it makes me a little nervous to read something like this, but i deal with you. if you fuck with my pay, i take action. if you don't, then mark is wrong about you and there's no need to worry.

so...

here's what's up for those of you who are worrying about me.

1. i am poised to get the fuck out of dodge. i can pack my shit in 10 minutes. all my important, hard to replace documents, i.e. reference letters, passport, etc. are somewhere else where monster can't get his grubby kimchi-covered mitts all over it.
2. i have the financial means to do this. i'm fine, money-wise. (i also have one new pair of PANTS thanks to my jedi father).
3. my first payday is tomorrow (thursday jan. 29). if he waffles on paying me, i will say "WHEN can you pay me?" because, shitbag or not, things do happen, and it's a small school. but he gets one chance. i will make it abundantly clear that it looks really bad for him to be not paying me with what mark has said about him, and that i am a million miles from home, and it's just unacceptable. if he misses the second date, i bail. i leave him in the proverbial lurch, because at this point very few recruiters will work with him. nobody in town will...
4. like princess leia, i have powerful friends. if i bail and monster threatens me with visa shit, my recruiters, who know korean law as well as he does, will do him like he's a boston choirboy.

so, that's it in a nutshell. he knows that i know. he knows i'm on my guard and knows that i could leave andong in a heartbeat and (since i haven't signed a contract yet) there's nothing that can be done about it legally.

so, really, i'm in a good place. i do feel like i'm the one steering this ship. i don't mind working for someone with a shady past and questionable business ethics... as long as i get paid. i mean shit, i worked for ace window cleaners for 6 years.

so stop worrying already. the idea of bailing is appealling-i like adventure! i have options in taiwan and japan. also, wonny and the girls have said they'd place me in a different korean job in days. if i stay here, monster is sort of in check. he will pay me, or he knows i will leave. i don't really want to leave, i truly dig some of the students. and andong is nice. it's like a korean kelowna. or calgary.

what else? some of the andong foreigners eat pig intestine last night. i watched. i drank beer. i needed a beer at the sight of that shit.

korea is north america's cultural dumping-ground. the movies on TV here suck. i watched TOP GUN the other night and was surprised at how haute couture it was in comparison to some of the dreck i've been watching.

what are you reading? i was going to read the fountainhead by ayn rand and see what has got republicans and socialists in such a tizzy... i haven't seen so many people at odds since duran duran was a band... too bad my copy was missing the first 17 pages. damn used book stores. all of them are run by pinkos.

so i switched to "the forty days of musa dagh", a story about armenian resistance to turkish genocide in WW1. it's good. just another historical novel... but good. it helps me understand my good pal aram... only he isn't running around chasing goats. perhaps he should be.

you can all send me literature. i have to go to seoul to buy books. there are no english language books in andong. send me something you think has literary merit.

music? thin lizzy. themselves. the darkness. integrity. fugazi. slayer. nothing really new there.

oh my god.

should i be panicking?

http://www.eslcafe.com/forums/korea/viewtopic.php?t=14730

this is the guy 'mark the molester' who bailed on what is now my job.

well since i sent out a big "i updated my blog" email here's an update. if you post on the nwhardcore.com board or are in my 'close personal friends of sean' fan club you have already read the meaty stuff.

it's still cold. i went to danyang yesterday, a little town on the road to seoul. the whole area looks like the area around shuswap lake, really similar with its 50/50 decidious/coniferous ratio.

my boss is still omnipresent. wants to be my buddy. his kid woon is a terror, i wish i knew what the hell he was saying to me. he is a lot like my nephew liam, the prince of darkness.

i got some photos developed... i will try to find a scanner and maybe enlist the help of master horticulturalist/master html-ist josh payton to post it on here so i won't have to send you all annoying emails that take two weeks to load.

pants are on their merry way. pretty soon i'll be emailing "send me SHORTS!!!" but there's a dickies' outlet in town and i can just make me some cutoffs.

if you feel so inclined you can telephone me at 082-010-3157-0770. actually 082 is the korea country code, i don't know exactly tho. dial the operator and ask, then dial my number, the 010-etc. after the country code and you're cookin' with gas.

ok so i'm a little calmer today. i think there is good reason to be wary of what any fruitcake says here, i just gotta watch my shit. i met the andong foreigners last night and they proved to be the sober, objective middle ground between bill and mr. kim. some really good peeps, jay, andy, andy's girlfriend, sarah, and some other dude. andy is from miramichi, NB. and really cool. he walked me home because i was lost.

some things i forgot to mention?

another part of my paranoia that i forgot to mention was that it was most definitely plausible that mr. kim would have gone into my room and ransacked my shit. i had written a bunch of postcards, they were tucked inside a book. i got home one night and mr. kim says "oh, i see you are writing your family, your grandfather, your friends... that is good" or something like that. he has definitely snooped, so maybe he'd stoop too. i just have to defend my privacy in clever ways.

on top of bill being a weird dude in general... he attempts to follow korean customs in a really strange way. one of those customs is gift-giving. most korean stores sell gift packs, so he was scanning the selection in the LG25 (korea 7-11). he didn't like the soap, he thought brandy was inappropriate, as was soju. what did he settle on?

SPAM. he bought mr. and mrs. lee a zipper-bag gift pack of maybe 25 cans of SPAM. 40,000 won (roughly 40 CDN) worth of SPAM. i just sat there shaking my head.

for those of you that know what a shit-brown poffenroth knob is... well, they have them here too, much to my pleasant surprise. andy from miramichi knows andong very well.

so i was overreacting. perhaps bill's paranoia is somewhat justified... but in my case it was not a factor. passport and ticket intact.

it was -18 C in seoul, perhaps the cold was altering my senses.

clearly my director is someone to be watched like a hawk... but i will relax for now. beers with yong tak tonight!!!

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).

two things to never, ever do again:

1. drink draft beer in korea.
2. teach ESL to middle school kids with a hangover. even a mild hangover.

i had this teacher, mrs. bjornson... word on the street is that she was a major vodka-swiller. she sure had a red face... anyways, i don't know how she handled it. day in, day out. pounding head, hyperactive children. what a bad idea.

the weekend was really nice, i was shuttled from temple to confucian school to temple. it was really quite beautiful, a winter wonderland. and as much as these people eat bibimbap you'd think there'd be bad bibimbap in korea. i don't think such a thing exists; every successive bibimbap is better.

i've eaten octopus twice. once raw. i've eaten a lot of weird shit. squid eggs... this plate of mackerel and halibut sashimi the size of a child's bed... dried persimmon... about the only thing i have not been able to stomach so far has been sesame leaf. i can't do it, it just tastes like soap. whattaya do?

oh another thing-never sing metallica in a karaoke bar. it's like having a tattoo on your face, nobody understands, man.

last night, while cruising through downtown andong, i found a store called.... (drum roll)...


BABY HUNT.
.

that's the name of my next band. BABY HUNT.

the first distinctly asian thing i saw here was a truckload of dogs being carted off to the slaughterhouse... so i'm thinking that this is a country of mass cruelty. all whining aside, cruelty can be fucking hilarious.

BABY HUNT. i'm getting that tattooed on my arm tomorrow.

BABY HUNT.

whoah, don't send me shit yet. my address is actually

709-79 taewhadong, andong, s. korea.

i sure as hell hope those pants didn't get lost in the shuffle.

as of 7pm thursday night, 75% of all korean kids are spoiled and need a kick in the gennies.

so yesterday i experimented with pictionary. with some kids, it went over like a lead turd. however, one of my advanced classes, who are all extremely shy for some weird reason, took to it like most people take to breathing.

i'm trying to crack the whip a little bit, though it seems that with a lot of the little buggers i'm talking way over their heads and a little too fast. what is worst about that is that none of them will speak up to say "slow down, teacher!!!" but they'll yell "teecha! teecha!" and make a joke in korean that is lost on me.

so i have found out that i can get mail here at the school, if you want to send me stuff, LIKE PANTS, you can.

sean o'leary c/o REI language school. 709-79T Agwhadong, Andong, South Korea.

that's all for now. i'm told pants aren't as big a problem as i thought, but send me pants anyways. free pants make the world go round.

two or three new things:

1. i have the gayest cellphone in the history of telecommunications.

2. it's cold.

3. send me pants!!! lex was not lying when she said there were no pants over size 32 in this country. i wear normal levis 501s, dark blue, waist 36 and length 32. i'm a fat dude.

day 2, andong.

so here's some catchup. the flight worked out just fine. the worst thing about it was walking around LAX, us airport security is truly the most retarded thing in the world. asiana airlines didn't charge me a fee for my flight-change, so that was 75 USD saved. i arrive in busan to my recruiters, and it fills me with a little bit of dread because it becomes clear to me that they are just 3 girls with cell phones and a nice website. it's not like the JET program or anything, just a totally indie operation. therefore the 3 hour ride to andong was filled with a teeny bit of trepidation. but they bought me some snazzy bibimbap in a roadside cafe; jetlag and all i was feeling like a champ.

we meet mr. kim (who the fuck woulda known, a korean guy named mr. kim?), and after a lengthy meeting that was conducted about 25% in english, i got the job. mr. kim "really wanting work with me" according to wonny, winnie and hye-yah. still scared as shit, but whatever, it's adventure.

mr. kim has totally opened up his house to me, he gave me the use of 2 bedrooms, a key to the house, has said that his grandmother will do my laundry, give me unlimited kimchi and rice, etcetera. about the only thing that sucks about it is the brazen cold of his house. it's very drafty and heated by little space heaters.

after a few hours of settling in, mr. kim took me shopping, bought me a razor (we're on 110v here), cereal, juice and beer. it's good so far.

DAY ONE OF TEACHING.

we pull up to the school, mr. kim putters like a champ around his office, i smile and nod. there seems to be a fair amount of down time in the morning here. we split a giant pot of soon-doo-boo, my fave korean dish. i don't see why everyone is warning me about the soon-doo-boo here, it's way spicier in vancouver. the thing that is different is that two of the side dishes are NOT pickled potatoes but tiny dried minnows. they taste like fish jerky really, not half bad.

at 12:30 i am tossed into the fray. tossed to the proverbial lions. i had an idea that the kids would be rather merciless, and some were. some just didn't pay attention. i did my best to speak slowly but nerves got the better of me. "TEE-CHA, speak slower... speak less difficult" was the refrain... i ended up eating a lot of humble pie and getting my waegook ass laughed at quite a bit as the troublemakers yammered to their friends in korean.

the good thing about it - i have been nicknamed "HURK". which i orignally thought was "herc", short for "hercules" but i soon realized that korean kids have not seen all that much shitty 1960s canadian TV. so what i thought was "herc! herc!" was actually HULK with a korean accent... and because of my size i have become this bellowing giant in their eyes. i always knew i was an awe-inspiring dude but it's good to have that idea reinforced by 100 kids.

i survived the day. i think the worst thing is going to be dealing with the constant activity, i had a bit of a stress headache at the end of the 6 hours. i felt really flustered, and with the jet lag i was ready for bed around 7.

mr. kim's brother yong-tak is a cool dude, he's taken to me like an old friend... he took me and his buddy out for this crazy korean stew and soju. soju is gross, like weak gin. but the conversation was pretty good, just "what do you do in YOUR country" kinda stuff. he likes black sabbath and his favorite band is queen so i think we will get along swimmingly.

it's 10:30 am. mr. kim will be here soon to ramble on in broken english. i think i'd better go and get some chow. more soon.

ARGH. as if life could have gotten any worse. anyways i get to the airport, check in ON TIME and with the US customs lineup i'm 1 minute late for my flight to LAX. ONE MINUTE. ONE MINUTE.

alaska airlines sets new standards for unaccountability; their lackey at the ticket desk's attitude was "i work for alaska airlines, not the US government, why should i warn people about how bad the lineups are?"

i have never wanted to murder someone as badly as i did last night. i'm sleeping on michelle's couch. i so badly want to leave this city, it's like the bermuda triangle.

wow.

i'm packing and packing and there doesn't seem to be any end to it. shit has been so fucked for the last 24 hours... i get back to vancouver from a barnstorming tour of the okanagan and alberta. i brought the severe cold with me i guess because vancouver is colder than a witch's tits in antarctica.

a development: the school on geoje closed. it just up and closed. wonny (my recruiter in busan) broke the news tonight at around 6pm. she frantically scanned my options and found me a job in andong, about 50 miles north of busan. this was a major disappointment, but i guess i'll have to suck it up. it just was not meant to be. at least andong looks halfway cool and isn't too far from the ocean. lots of historical sites, lots of markets and stuff, and not too large of a city. my director mr. kim wants to make sure "i don't drink during the week" but that's exactly what i'm doing right now.

we'll see how it goes. i have 3 days to clean and move shit. this is where i find out who my 'real friends' are i guess. i'd type the letters 'L','O' and 'L' in succession but that would make way too much sense. things don't make sense right now.