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By Marty, February 2, 2011 9:37 am

My contract is up next month at the private school I now work at and I’ve already got a ticket home. But it’s still a maybe in my mind. Although I had applied for a couple of university positions, nothing had come of my applications until mid January. That’s when friends of mine, who already worked at these colleges, submitted my application again with their personal recommendations. Of course, it’s always been that way – it’s better to network than simply throw resumes to the wind.

Anyway, two colleges here in town, one a nursing college and the other a national technical university, decided they’d better get busy and hire a native English speaker for their spring semester which starts in March. I interviewed at the nursing college last week and then at the teach uni this week. Both times I knew my competition – other friends here in town. That makes it nice because if I don’t get the job I’ll still have a friend there for next year when they need another teacher. The nursing college has already decided and they didn’t choose me. No worries, the winning applicant was Alan, a guy who used to live in Watertown, SD and partied at The Prop, the old watering hole by the lake near Lizzie’s former home.  I’m happy for him. On the plus side, he has a private school of his own he’ll have to hire a teacher for. Maybe I can be his boy there when I come back.

The tech university is a much bigger school and they’re hiring a couple of teachers. They wanted writing instructors, and with the novel I’ve written and continuing writing on my other website, Ulsanonline.com, I figured I’ve got a good chance. My competition is Dee, another good friend who has written for the same website and for the local newspaper we both wrote for a few years back. Dee is also a rock climbing partner and we’ve spent many a Saturday together clinging to rock faces. She’s got a leg up on me on this job as she’s midway through her Masters degree in journalism. She’s also younger and prettier, which is something the Koreans tend to value more in their native English speakers than they do quality or ability, of which she has plenty of also. Regardless, this would be a nice job if I get it, but I’m not holding my breath. If I get, I’ll stay through May and come home. If not, I’ll come home in March.  I hope to know definitively within the next week or two.  I have to admit, though, that even though I’d like the job, I’m more than ready for a break and am homesick. Part of me wants to be passed over  for the job so I can simply go home for a while. The other part of says that rejection still hurts and I want the job, more so than the nursing college job I was already rejected for.

This week, February 2nd through the 4th, is Lunar New Year. It’s one of the two biggest of Korean holidays and the country nearly shuts down while people travel in packs to their hometowns to celebrate. We’ll be going to Pohang and I’ll be sitting on the floor again for a couple of days.  Next week, beginning on the 7th, people will be back and work and thinking hard about who they’re going to hire. I should probably know something that week.

Until then, ta ta for now… and Happy New Year

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By Marty, January 25, 2011 10:48 pm

We’ve Moved.

Not nearly as traumatic as moving day has been in the past. In fact, it was relatively easy. With a few exceptions, of course.

It started at 10:30, which was probably the biggest exception. The movers were supposed to arrive at 12:30, so we still had time to make some breakfast, drink coffee, lounge a bit and take showers and get dressed. We did almost none of that. I had time for only one cup of coffee and everyone was else was still in their pajamas. I had already gotten up and taken the dogs out to the park so I was at least dressed.  MyeongHee complained that they were too early, but they just barged in and went to work.

And work they did.

on the left, nephew ChangHyun, DongHyun and MyeongHee stand amid a sea of boxes and crates in our old home

Within one hour, this team of five or six people (they moved so fast I didn’t really count them) had everything packed. They marched in a boatload of reinforced boxes and proceeded to unfold them and load them up. One woman stayed in the kitchen and wrapped dishes in bubble wrap and filled boxes and then did the dry good and then worked over the refirgerator and freezer.  The mean worked on the living room and bedrooms and packed books, beds and clothes and armoires. They had their business down to a smart science.

MyeongHee tries to act happy even though she's had no shower or breakfast

It was really amazing how much stuff we had. Especially considering I moved to Korea with a suitcase and duffel bag of clothes and a few sundries. Of course acquiring a wife means also acquiring a lot of other things, such as all her pots, pans, dishes, refrigerator, and her clothes. Add in her teenage son and all his accoutrements and we had a 2-ton truck filled. And even that was amazing. No trudging up and down stairs for this moving team.

The ladder truck

Once everything was packed, the ladder truck arrived and they began moving things down into the truck.

The platform is moved into place on the front balcony

A test ride up on the platform

Boxes and crates moved with ease from the 4th floor to ground level in mere seconds

While the men on the 4th floor loaded the platform with boxes and crates, one man in the truck rearranged them into the truck for a tight fit. They would send down a new platform of boxes and he would quickly slide everything into the truck and send it up again for another load while he stacked them.

Just less than one later they had everything moved from our apartment to the truck and we’re pulling out. An amazing time of slightly less than 2 hours to pack and load and entire 3-person household. We packed only our wallets, money, important papers, sex toys (just kidding) and passports. They did everything.

And they were off. MyeongHee and the two boys (her nephew ChangHyun has been staying with us since Christmas) took off with the car while I stayed behind. I cleaned up some and then took off on my scooter to join them

preparing to load the new apartment

And then the process begins anew – only in reverse. Boxes are loaded on to the platform in the parking lot and shuttled up to the 3rd floor.

One man waits for the platform to bring more boxes

A new sea of boxes and crates is formed

This time, we got involved in the process. We knew where we wanted things and how we wanted them arranged. To let them do it all would have been possible, but we’d have probably redone a lot if they did. Our clothes was another small exception to the day – they unpacked them and didn’t seem to notice that my underwear, which are quite a bit bigger than MyeongHee’s, all went into the same section of the armoire.

At just after 2:30 pm the team left with their now empty truck. A total of 4 hours to pack, move and unpack and entire apartment of goods. That must be some kind of land-speed record. Nothing was scratched, nothing was missing and nothing was broken – not even the many eggs that were in the refrigerator. A testament to efficiency of the Korean moving team. I was very impressed. That cost us about US$900 which I thought was a good value.

Still, we spent the next several hours setting things up, hanging pictures, redoing the pond and waterfall. The final exception was the gas. We had none until the next morning so it was a bit chilly and we had to cook with just the microwave. Truly a small price to pay for a mostly effortless move.

The New Apartment, including Sparky the dog

I was going to take several pictures of the new place. This will have to suffice. If you really want to see it, you can come and visit us.

Here’s our new address:

Ulsan
Namgu,Yaumdong 701-1
Hanla Ace Apt. Bldg 101 No. 305

The phone, if you want to call is 82-052-266-5941

That’s all the new for now. Love to everyone.

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By Marty, January 23, 2011 9:07 am

That’s what my friend Mark called them when he came to visit: hives. Vast tracts of apartment high rises. Well, they’re quite a bit more spacious than that, but the analogy still holds.

Today we’re moving from our villa-style apartment in the suburbs to an apartment in the city.  We went in last night to check out the place and see how clean the previous renters left it. It wasn’t too bad, but they left a dozen or so posters on the walls, windows and doors – mostly elementary-age posters with a mix of Korean and English language. We spent a good amount of time pulling them off and scraping the remains of the tape off. Otherwise, the place is in good shape.

I’ll shut off the internet here sometimes around noon and will be back online on Monday, although email via the smartphone is still possible.

But check this out…we’re getting a new internet provider, and new cable TV provider and a new land line phone provider – all three in one company. How much would you pay for that in America?  I think the phone alone would cost you $30. Plus another $30 or $40 for each of the other services.  Not here – we’re getting all three for the princely sum of $30 per month.  Korea is cheap. And I’ll bet my internet is 10x faster than yours, too.

Here’s where we are now. We’re far enough out of the city that Google maps uses a lower resolution on the west end of the area where we are. The higher resolution is for the city and our new place in down east.

And here’s a closeup of the area. Looking closely, you can see the shadows caused by the high rise apartments in the area. The big building on the right is ‘Home Plus’, one of the large department stores. It’s very much like a Target or WalMart with a grocery. It’ll be nice to have some decent shopping close by. It looks like a parking lot because they park on the roof. The lavender lines on the left belong to the local Korean market – a long line of stalls of just about anything to buy. More pictures of that fun place later.

Anywho, I hope to have some pictures of the move and the new digs this week.  Ta ta for now.

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By Marty, January 17, 2011 11:25 pm

It kind of snuck up on sooner than I thought. I was thinking we’d move around the end of the month, but we’re now set to move on the 22nd of January. One week of living here in the school building and then we get to move into town.We’ll move on a Sunday and have to do almost no work. The  moving company will come and box everything up, take it down to the truck, deliver it and unpack it all for us. We’ll just have to arrange it the way we want it. All that for only $900.

It’s costing a few bucks in other ways, though. We’ll need to buy a washing machine, a twin size bed, and an armoire (Koreans don’t do closets as far as I can discern) or two. We’ve already bought a new sofa.  Another $1000 or so.

We’re looking forward to it for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that my landlord is also my boss. One can imagine the potential for conflict – or more likely having to bury conflict to keep it from happening.  But also because people tend to tattle on anything I do (let my dogs leave poo in the park, for example) to the school director and in the new place that won’t be possible – they’ll have to deal with me as I am and not someone they can circumvent and go to my boss. Also, its just a bigger, nicer place: 3 bedrooms, 1.5 bath.  We’re in a 2:1 now, but we have a very large rooftop veranda we’ll lose.

We’re also looking forward to not driving so damn much. On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays I take MyeongHee to work and then go to Samsung Chemical to teach. Then I go back to the school for the evening. Afterward, I drive back into town to pick her up and drive back to the school/house. The new apartment is close to her hairshop and a couple dollar taxi ride.

I’ve also started plans for a big-ass party here. My website, Ulsanonline.com, has been in business for just a little over two years. It’s all mine, now, by the way. My partner went back to Canada in June and, for a while, he thought he might come back to Korea. Now he says he will never come back (he broke up with his Korean girlfriend) and we’ve transferred all the ownership to me. So, it’s my very own website and business. A fairly decent one, too, as I have the most popular English language site in Ulsan. It’s getting 200 unique people a day hit it – not anything as large as Google, mind you, but decently big for an English language site in a Korean city.  So, on the 28th, I’m hosting a party at one of the foreigner bars here. Should be fun. I’m not a big party planner so I’ve got a few friends helping me out with logistics.The biggest headache was getting a large banner printed. I had to take my artwork to a sign maker and have them create a vinyl size I could hang in the bar. All accomplished in Korean (with some hand waving, of course.) The sign, a full 2m in length, cost only $20, which explains why there are hundreds of them around town hung on every lamp pole and guardrail. But that’s another story.

And still planning on coming home. I’ve paid for a flight on the 6th with my AA miles, but I also submitted an application to a university for a job. This one actually looks promising as I have a friends already there pushing for me. It will indeed delay my return, but certainly not cancel it.

Anywho, that’s all the news I have. Hope everyone is doing well.

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By Marty, October 2, 2010 8:59 pm

It’s been a while since I took SaTang out for a run. Summer is just too hot for her to run as far as I usually go. Now that fall is here and she won’t overheat, I decided to take her out with me on the bike. Sparky doesn”t go to the hairshop like she’d been going – I think MyeongHee has decided it’s too much trouble to keep a pup at her shop – so I took her with us. This was a first for her. The basket I bought to hold SaTang is only good for 10kg. We just barely made that limit but I wanted to make sure both dogs physically fit in the basket before we attach it to the bike.

Well, they both fit as evidenced by the above picture. Sparkey isn’t so sure what the hell we’re about to do, but being all puppy she’s ready for just about anything.

So, basket firmly attached, we’re ready to ride. SaTang isn’t so sure why she has to share the basket with Sparky. She’s usually pretty psyched about getting to go but she seems little put out – even peeved. Ears down is a sign of not entirely happy.

But, a little distraction with a ‘hey look at me’ shout from MyeongHee and the ears are up and ready.  We only ride a short way with the dogs in the basket. Just far enough to get out of the neighborhood and away from the cars. We rode around the corner and up the hill to the farms behind Cheonsang. The farmers have paved quite a few one-lane roads in and around their patches of rice, bell-flower, sesame, and squash. There’s a few ponds back there, too.  Once out of the way of cars, both dogs had great fun running around and smelling anything and everything. Lots of flowers, trees and hills and it’s beautiful farm land.

The next day, I took them to the playground across the street from our apartment. Normally we have this place to ourselves in the mornings since all the kids are in school. But we were attacked by a pre-school mob of kids who came to the playground .

SaTang is well used to the kiddos and is usually very calm, even tolerant of the little turds as they do some heavy petting. Sparky, though, hasn’t gotten the hang of the kid thing and hangs back, sometimes cowering under me.

Here’s she hiding behind SaTang (the playground fence is out of view on her right) and stays just far enough away to keep from getting petted.

Poor Sparky. That’s a classic ‘help me’ look as the kids encroach on her space.

Don’t tell anyone, but I ended up smacking one of these little shits. He thought it would be fun to jump on the dog with both knees. SaTang jumped with a little yelp and I reacted with a backhand across his temple. No way he’d understand my angry English anyway. The smack was probably the only thing that would have worked. And it did. He went off crying to the teacher who brought the kids to the park. I don’t blame him – I blame the parents.  Still lots of fear and ignorance regarding dogs. Just today we came out of our apartment and a teenage girl dropped her book bag with a screech and hopped into a nearby truck bed to escape from my marauding hounds from hell, both of whom were probably wondering what the fuss was all about.

Anyway, enough of the dogs.

Tonight being Saturday I’m off to the closing night of the last foreigner bar in this city. This bar, Benchwarmers, has been in business for 6 years and the owners are tired of fighting each other for who is going to work what night, split what cost, give discounts to whom – oh! The Drama!

When I first came to Korea, the Korean owned bars and nightclubs operated differently than they do now. It was nearly impossible to buy a drink by the glass – one had to have a table and a single tab, which was paid at the end of the evening. Moreover, whisky or vodka was purchased by the bottle – a prohibitive expense at $125 a bottle or more. That was no problem for a group of people who arrive and leave together as Koreans often do. Koreans rarely go dutch, by the way. It may be his turn at this place but your turn at that place. A single tab was no issue.

For the come-and-go pub crawl crowd of foreigners who want to check out a bar, buy a drink, see who’s there and then move on to another bar that model doesn’t work.   Splitting a tab at the end of a night would be a headache, if not impossible.  There were only a few foreigner owned or foreigner friendly bars in town. These days, many Koreans have gotten smart and figured that the rigidity they imposed is the “old way” and many Korean owned bars offer drinks by the glass. Consequently, the bars have become a better mix of Koreans and foreigners instead of the either/or bar.

So, the last bar in Ulsan owned by a foreigner is closing tonight.  Should be a good party and lots of people will be there to help celebrate and/or commiserate. It will feel like old home week.  There are lots of places where foreigners go now.  It’s  nice, by the way, to walk in to any of them and find someone I know – that almost never happened back in Texas – being part of a small minority makes it easy to meet people in the same situation.  Don’t wait for pictures of this event. I don’t do pictures in bars often.

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By Marty, May 20, 2010 12:58 pm

I had planned to be doing a lot of writing over the past few weeks. I did get some writing in on my newest novel, but that’s taken a back seat. I got a few dozen pages written before being sidelined by other things going on here. What things you might ask? A plethora. All good.

First, we (my Ulsanonline.com partner, Fin, and I) have been approached by a multi-faceted group in Seoul. They had seen our site and the great stuff we’d produced for the foreigners in Ulsan.  The owner, a Korean-born, Brazil- and US-raised guy named Fabio sees a potential for us in a vastly underserved portion of Korea – the Gyeongsangnam-do province to the south and west of Ulsan. We’ll do a website, complete with lifestyle, travel and how-to information for the area. But we won’t stop at just a website. Fabio and his team are fired up about creating a magazine. A magazine that caters to both foreigners and english-speaking Koreans, complete with fabulous photos and glossy goodness.  I admit, I wasn’t keen on the idea as print seems to be going the way of the buggy whip, but they’ve got me wrapped into it. I’ll be co-editor of the magazine and Chief geek on the website.  The catch is that the local city and provincial governments all have foreign populations – teachers like me, engineers, factory workers – and they all have a budget to provide support in one form or another.

I started work as editor of the Korea Sun back in the summer of 2008. That was another glossy lifestyle magazine, but it went under before any of my writing or editing was published – costs were just too high to produce and revenue from Korean businesses for ads were just too low.  I’m somewhat wary of this being the same, printing and ads sales will be Fabio’s role and his other companies are already established. We might have a shot here. We’ll see. Faboi’s team includes several English-speaking foreigners, all of whom are counting on this to free them from teaching to focus on this full time.  I’m keeping my teaching job for now – until the $$ roll in regularly.

Here in Ulsan, with spring firmly ensconced and summer nearing, the outdoor season is upon us. We’re planning a “scooter rally” – a race/scavenger hunt to visit several places around the city and take creative pictures. I’ve been involved in the planning of this event as well.

With both the new magazine/website and scooter rally, I’ve been doing lots of programming. I’m chief geek here in Ulsan and forced myself to learn some new tricks.  Although I doubt most reading will understand what it is, Flash is a tool that is very prevalent on websites where animation, flashy, eye-catching graphics are required. You may not know what it is, but I guarantee you’ve visited and seen a website with flash.  It would be a shame if you didn’t see mine.

So here’s the programming/artwork I’ve been doing lately. These are likely transient and won’t stay up in these places forever, but for now these links work. I may, at a later date, pull them into a portfolio of sorts should I wish to build a resume for becoming a geek back in the USA someday. The website for the new magazine is still on ulsanonline.com – we’ll eventually buy a site expressly for that, but we can dovetail it off there for now. Check out the fancy lead-in here.  That cool map thingy – all Flash.  Then I made a banner for the scooter rally. It sits on the front page for now, but will certainly be gone after the rally. The cute little scooters drive across the page with links to the race site – all Flash programming. For the race site and registration, I made another fancy-pants banner on this page. The original “inferno” as they’ve called it started several years ago. They’ve skipped a few years, but its back with some flashy Flash.

Anywho, that’s why I haven’t written too much on here lately. I’ve been a busy boy.  More news later as it happens.

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By Marty, March 28, 2010 11:36 am

This month I signed a contract for another year here at the school. It will take me through February of 2011.

And I dropped the bomb on MyeongHee.

February 2011 is when her son, DongHyun, will graduate from highschool and either go to college or off to the military. He must go sometime before he’s 28, although most boys do a year or so of university before signing up.

Either way, I decided it would be a good time for a change. I’ll have been teaching at this school for four years straight and another in 2004-05. Five years is about my limit, it seems. But the bigger bomb I dropped is that I want to go back to America. Probably not forever, but longer than the week or so I’ve been able to come back in the previous three years.  Who the hell knows what forever is anyway?  But the longest I’ve ever held a job is seven years and five seems close enough.

Lately, I’ve been feeling like I want to be able to experience America again – nothing so dramatic as the old Simon and Garfunkel song. Just the feeling of going outside and speaking English to a neighbor or chatting with the salesclerk in a store. Not that either of those happened very frequently in America, but when I see a Korean just having casual conversation it makes me miss that. One of the TV shows that really gets me is America’s Funniest Home Videos – just goofy stuff -  but seeing the homes, the yards, the kids, the sports… I miss my country and my culture. I’m probably idealizing to a great extent, but the fact remains that I miss my home country and despite my ever increasing Korean-language ability I am still an outsider here.

Of course, the bigger question is what would I do when I got there?  It’s hard to imagine what job I would qualify for after doing nothing more than speaking English for four years. And that’s if there are jobs to be had – given the economy that’s a big-ass what-if.

Other questions involve MyeongHee – she’s not interested in coming to America. She didn’t enjoy it much.  She’d rather stay. And leaving her hairshop would entail a great expense upon reopening should she come back. She’s happy doing one or two weeks visits but no more.

If I do come home, it looks like it might be just an extended month or two rather than years.  All of that is still a year away and a lot can happen between now and then. We’ll have to see how things go here and in the US. Stay tuned. More will be written as it becomes clear to me.