The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Foreigner

Alas, time to say goodbye to an old friend . . . it seems that I have done something wrong with my Opera Unite account, and as a result, I came back home yesterday (Saturday) afternoon, after work, to find that I could no longer access my Opera Blog. Eight years of blogging, lost! I'm confused and inconsolable . . . and just before Christmas, too . . .


For some time, the new versions of the Opera browser allowed people to set up access to sets of shared files from specific folders, so that others could (for example) have private chat with them, view their photos, and so on. This meant, in fact, that many web functions normally available at separate web sites could now be replicated on one's own home machine, for free. So I found a free template online (I actually contacted the author about this, and he was (a) amazed that it was still in circulation, and (b) very pleased that I liked it), and got to work.


My intention was to discuss, offline and with private access, topics which were well off the beaten track and relating to the nature of the world we live in, which are not often discussed online due to their contentious nature. I may try to find another solution to this (or maybe Opera will relent . . . some hope!!!), but in the meantime I have other blogs set up in various places and I have changed the design of this one to resemble the offline one. I hate bright web pages - a web page is not a paper page, folks, even though it is often designed to look like one by default - and I hate whiteness that stings my eyes (think about fluorescent lights, for example). So I sat down this Sunday morning and decided that moping about it all weekend was no way to go about things . . . time for change. I've always been an agent of change!


So let's have something of an update . . . since the last entry here, I have worked at schools in Gwangju, Yangsan and now Busan. As usual, how long I will stay here is anyone's guess, but I have transitioned to teaching English to adults; I may change my mind and revert to children next time, though. The style of the place feels uncomfortable to me.


I was in fact fired from the Gwangju job after only three weeks, despite the fact that at the interview, the manageress pointed out that (a) she had chosen me from among over fifty applicants worldwide, and (b) she thought that I should stay there for ten years. But when it came to the crunch, there was no discipline and I simply could not control the youngest students. I then had to finish a second agonising month before moving to another public school in Yangsan, north of Busan, for some kind of non-standard contract which was for fifteen months, rather than the more usual year.


Probably the most difficult part of the long-term foreigner teacher's sojourn is the process of settling down. At the original hagwon (private English school) where I worked in Changwon, the boss had been happy for me to stay for as long as I wanted, and although the situation could be stressful at times, generally, I felt okay. However, when the school franchisor decided to update the materials, it suddenly became amazingly difficult, and after a few other unhelpful events, I finally resigned and left my job of five and a half years, moving to Miryang. They didn't want me to stay when the contract year ended, so I shifted to Gwangju; that was a fiasco, so I moved to Yangsan; I didn't want to stay there myself because it was so boring and out-of-the-way, so now I am in Busan. And I don't really feel happy here, either . . . I often think that this is a problem many (often younger) foreigners never really face, because their time here is a passing phase in their long-term journey to somewhere else; they do not feel the need to accumulate possessions, as this is impractical when hopping between countries. The long-term foreigner has other considerations to make.


These thoughts were in my mind the other weekend, when I stuck a load of old photos on my Facebook; I don't have a scanner here, so I used my current cell phone to photograph the, er, photographs, and posted the results to My Albums. As my editor in England once wrote: "How much water has passed under the bridge since then!" . . . and that deep, melancholic feeling returned, that times have passed and will not return . . . where are all the little friends I used to know? What happened to them? And do they ever wonder what happened to me?


It is in this frame of mind that I regard the loss of my blog of eight years, that record of places, times and feelings, with a sharp and unexpected sadness. It is a reminder that the wonders of twenty-first century technology are transitory, and that one of the reasons we lose them is because we do not control them ourselves . . . we trust third parties with arbitrary and arcane rules with our property, only to suffer loss when they are somehow displeased with our actions, and at its heart, this represents a loss of both personal privacy and personal sovereignty. And so I return to Blogger, where perhaps I should have been all along, as the other functions originally taken by Opera have been taken over in the meantime by my membership of Facebook.


Will I miss it? Hell, yes! I could see the usefulness of the services the browser offered for connecting my workplace with my home PC, and allowing me to access documents when I needed them but they were otherwise unavailable, and as I prefer to use Linux at home, it was a perfect solution. But now it's gone, and they have not told me why.


So thanks, Opera. I'll still use the browser of my choice, but now you lose out to others who offer similar services. And if this is how you treat a loyal, long-term customer who has actually been with you since Version 4.x, I won't be recommending you to friends and acquaintances any more. Not when you treat people like that.


I'll continue my journey to destiny some other way . . .

Think, then Do

I'm always surprised at how blogging has taken off. This week, I received a mail from someone at Writers.net, inviting me to submit a new blog. Accordingly, I sat down in the morning (as I was waiting for the imminent arrival of my new washing machine, the old one having started to die the previous week) and began blogging away, finished it after about an hour, saved it, and . . . nothing! Lost! I will have to go back and do it all again!

And just as I was about to write this, the browser (Opera 9.50) suddenly collapsed. Lesson: Technology is unreliable. Thankfully, what I was writing had already been backed up, so I was able to get back to the Dashboard and resume.

Anyway, to introduce myself, my name is Andrew, I am about a month shy of my forty-sixth birthday and for the last five years or so, I have been living and working in South Korea, teaching English to schoolkids. In truth, I have more than one Korea-related blog (see http://my.opera.com/fukudasan/blog/, for example) and after some badgering from a co-worker here, signed up for Google Mail, and the rest is history . . . I arrived in Korea purely by accident (i.e. this place and the place before it were never part of my plan), but it seems to have worked out quite well, and the Boss asks me to stay each year (as well he might, it saves him a small fortune) and I have learned an awful lot myself along the way. And I keep learning.

I live and work in a city called Changwon, close to the southern coast of Korea. The pay is good but the kids are often awful, and anyone thinking of coming here should be forewarned of this: modern parents in South Korea are as pointlessly precious about their kids as they are anywhere else, with similar results. They crave computer games and have no life worth writing about, travel very little (because their parents are always working) and are becoming increasingly overweight - although it should be mentioned that considering the amount of time they spend sitting down, this is hardly surprising.

Many horror stories seem to get published on the Internet about terrible bosses and working conditions, but my Boss has just helped me jump through the hoops of the new E2 visa regs and stay for a sixth year, given me another pay rise and given me not just the usual annual bonus (equivalent to one month's salary minus tax) but also the outstanding bonus for the first year here (which never materialised because the original Boss's hagwon - part of the same hagwon chain - went bust recently). Originally I worked at another hagwon in the north of the city, but my Boss moved me to where I am now after about nine months, and he has kept me here ever since.

All this on top of sorting out a newer and larger apartment - including hiring a man with a flatbed to shift everything on a Sunday morning - and this week, purchasing a completely new Daewoo washing machine. Next time you hear someone whining about how bad they think their Boss is treating them, remember these things. The fact is that in any job, the man who hires you will not fire you unless you are a bad worker, get up everyone elses' noses or break the law. In over five years in Changwon, I have known only one (male, English) foreigner be fired . . . and that is a story in itself. Later . . . maybe.

What I would say is that you must think very carefully before coming here, and when you arrive, try not to treat the place like it's a joke because you only planned to stay here for one year. If you prove to be good at your job, your Boss will be happy to ask you to stay - after all, a change of foreign teachers is very expensive out here, and often involves a third party recruiter  - and each year you will receive effectively a "thirteenth month" separation payment, even though you are not leaving!

Additionally, accommodation is free, and you are only required to pay for things like utilities. So provided that (unlike myself) you arrive here without too many bills to pay back home, you can save an awful lot of money if you don't hit the local bars each night. But my attitude in this regard has changed, too.

Above all, however, staying here (rather than travelling around each year) is to be recommended because you have the free time, in your mind, to plan for the future. You have a reasonable income, a decent style of living and free time, and you only have the one life, so plan accordingly.This is a perfect place for planning, and with the Internet to help you, you can go a long way. Take your time, plan for what you want, then make your move.

And that is what I am planning now.