So I've decided to start writing again since my original intention was to keep my friends/family informed and entertained via my antics abroad but alas I also made friends whilst I was abroad so I feel they should know what my American antics are... I also heard a lot of great feedback from people reading my blog so I figure why not keep a good thing going? Thank you so much for reading!!
Escape from New Yong (wol)!
Our Korean Flee:
Basically we had about enough of the ass-backward Confucian rhetoric posing as modern business ethics. You know how a lot of businesses have all that equal opportunity employer stuff written on their applications? Yeah well Korea doesn't have that. So we decided to teach, Billy Madison, our boss a lesson not to screw with your foreign employees just like Kurt Russell in Escape from New York/ LA. We had recently been going to the dentist, a particularly nice clinic in Seoul, something that Doctor Christian Troy and Sean McNamara would have approved of, though our North Korean college president and our director displayed their distaste in. Apparently, we were all (the foreigners) were supposed to go to Mr Song in "downtown" Yeongwol who will do Buddha-knows-what to your teeth. Anyway, the reason the dentist is important was due to easing our secret getaway from our oppressors who caused not only physical but psychological stress, refused to pay my overtime and our plane tickets home (as per our contract) to say the least. The extra day at the "dentist" would allow ourselves and our bags over to an airport hotel in Seoul before we could finally escape our idiot employers but also Kim Jong Il's dong (missiles) from breathing down our necks. We planned on leaving on the 2nd because in private companies in Korea it can be quite standard to not pay you your last month's check if you give them a 60 day notice. So we decided to make sure we got paid and walk away into the night.
Leaving in the middle of the night is so common with foreigners in Korea that a widely used term was developed called "Pulling a Midnight Runner". There is also a podcast with this name about helpful information for foreigners living in Korea.
So the plan was set. The next morning the bank accounts were cleared, money wired home to inevitably help stimulate the economy. Loose ends were needed to be tied up at the apartment. I left a box of all the good and random stuff to Steve which included chestnuts and a Darth Vader helmet. 1/4 of the balcony was left with our wine/beer/bailey's bottles. A pot full of broken glass and eaten chicken bones. Some stuff in the fridge, my old clothes, the intercom in the sealing is ripped out. Shoe marks on the ceiling ;-) (I blame it on the soju and neighbors). Burnt charcoal marks on the couch. We should have sold our couch and T.V. in retrospect.
This is where John Carpenter's film takes a twist. Rushing out of our apartments we take a cab to the train station just down the road from us. We take the train to the next city of Wonju (A) because we don't want to be spotted at the bus station downtown and (B) the National Pension Office is located there. The Pension Office is important because once you leave Korea "permanently" you can request the money you and your employer have been putting aside towards your pension and if you do it before you leave you'll get your money within a few weeks instead of months or up to a year.
So we're rushing to the train station and the train starts to leave so we think oh shit we're screwed but I quickly realize the taxi drives much faster than the train so we tell our cabbie to head to the next train stop in the nearby city of Jecheon. We made it out of the cab, bought a ticket and made on to the tracks in time to hop on the train over to Wonju. Once we arrived we headed over to the National Pension Office to apply for our money and this is when things take an unexpected turn. first off, this pension office has no employee that speaks decent English. We give them all our documents for processing. Blake and I are chatting away, not a care in the world when the office worker all of a sudden hands Blake the phone. We didn't realize he was making some phone calls while we were chatting. Guess who he calls? Our fucking boss! So we tell him there's no way we want to talk to him. We enter a state of panic. Our whole "secret" plan to leave the country is blown! The idiot chats up the office worker for a good 15 minutes and we don't know what he's saying we just think of the worst that could happen. Finally, he finishes and we ask him, "Well what did he say"?! The office worker replies in broke-ass English, "He says, no trip." The man was verifying with our boss that we indeed were leaving the country but in the backward mind of our boss, thought that he could still keep us here because of our contract and because Confucius says you must listen to your elders no matter what shit comes out of his mouth. Well the revolution hit Russia much earlier than it ever will in Korea so the joke was on him. You'll see what I mean later.
We booked ass and took a taxi to the bus station and hop on just in time for the next bus to Seoul. All the while there, we felt frantic and anxious. What if he calls immigration and makes some shit up that we stole from the school or what if he shows up tomorrow at our departure gate and causes a scene. Thankfully, our boss was a pussy and an idiot so he didn't do shit. We spent our last night downtown in Seoul with a couple of friends, had a decent meal and saw our last Seoul prostitute who suggestingly cleared her throat as we walked by her.
The next morning all went smoothly. We boarded our plane with our bags the proper weight, handed in our National ID cards and like Sodom and Gommorah we never looked back like Lot's dumb wife. As our plane took off, I looked over to Blake and said, "Hey Blake", "Uhh he says, no trip". And we both laughed comfortably knowing that we'd never have to see his dumb face or the pathetic, kimchi and sewage infested excuse for a town Yeongwol was ever again.
One last thing! This song goes out to my former moronic and complete incompetent waste of space boss, Mr. Choi. Yung Joc - Fuck You Pay Me!
Music Recommendations:
Mark Farina - Mushroom Jazz series
World News Recommendations: because CNN and BBC don't have it all.
Aljazeera - not just for Arabs anymore... seriously white people work there too.
Huffingtonpost - I get my daily dose of everything good here.
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