Chicago Trip Part IV

Almost a solid 3 months since my last post. 2009 hasn't been a great year for my blog so I guess I'll need to see if I can step it up moving into 2010.

The first new thing that happened so far since my last post is that I've moved fully into my new apartment. It was kind of sad to leave my Hongdae apartment of 3 years but at the same time I felt I needed something bigger. And I got it. The new place is roughly 3 1/2 times the size of my old apartment and comes with a full roof that only I use. The other good news is that it didn't cost much more than the old place and is actually closer to work. All in all I think it was a good move. I'll post pictures of the place once I get a new camera so I'm assuming you understand that it won't happen anytime soon.

Other than settling into the new digs, I've just been getting accustomed to my new area and working at the company as usual. The new area offers a wider spectrum of foreign restaurants and is situated more in the central of Seoul so I now have equidistant access to every part of the city. One of the negatives is that I drink more than I probably should in my new surroundings but I attribute that mostly to being able to see friends I normally haven't been able to meet so often.

Work has been keeping me busy as usual. Along with the normal bevy of reports, presentations, trainings and whatnot, I've been focusing on raising sales for the year end budget to pad my numbers. I'm also looking at a promotion in March and will officially be a manager. Besides all that's going on, the winds of change are starting to blow again and 2010 is looking to be a year of big changes for me careerwise. More on this as it develops.

This brings us finally to the title of the post-- my latest upcoming trip to Chicago. After what will prove to be a trying 10 days of work, work and more work, I will be flying back home for the longest vacation I've had since 2006 when I first started this blog. I'll be back from December 4th until January 1st and I'm looking forward to spending time with the family and friends. Considering I'll have a full month this time, I expect to also be able to get some much needed relaxation time in as well. I'm thinking I'll use this blog as a mini-schedule keeper for me in a future blog post so I can keep track of my plans.

Pics and vids to follow.

Moving and Other Updates

So I'm down to averaging less than a post per month in 2009.

I'm not going to continue to make excuses for my lack of posting because its getting too monotonous though I will say that once a few things are off my plate, I hope to get back to more regular posting. In retrospect, I think that one of the main reasons I've been posting so infrequently this year is due to a lack of any sort of focus for the blog itself. I've been debating turning this into something that has more of a focus on some aspect of Korea (and Asia in general) that I am interested in so we'll see what's on the horizon for that. I'm thinking something a little less covered in the general Korean blogosphere and I'm definitely staying away from the general social critiques and news bits because the market is flooded with that already. I'm always up for ideas.

As far as updates go, the first big news is that I'm moving out of my one-room in Hongdae after 3 years into much bigger digs in Noksapyeong. The moving date is Sept 10th and I've got a lot of prep to do and loose ends to tie up. It's kind of sad moving out of Hongdae since I've been living there for so long and it is, without a doubt, a very fun and interesting place to live but I guess its time to move on. I'll post pics of the new place after I get settled.

Other than that, I've confirmed my trip home for the entire month of December. While I'm thinking I might spend about a total of a week of that time stopping by friends in Tokyo and LA, even with that time cut out this will be the longest I've been home since I left for Seoul again back in 2005. It's also going to be the first Christmas I've had at home since 2004 so meeting family and friends should be pleasant. Only 3 months left till that goes down.

Work is work and always will be I guess. I've actually got a mid year review in about an hour or so where I get to listen to my boss tell me about my perceived strengths and weaknesses while I do the same for her and the company. Overall it should be fun and I'm pretty sure I'm in good graces due to my really, really good sales numbers thus far this year. I guess we'll see what happens.

As I said, I hope to get back to posting more often after I finish moving so to all three people who still routinely follow my blog: I ask for just a little more patience. Thanks.

Wow, really?

I turn my back for what felt like a moment and it's already been a month and a half since my last post? Jeez, talk about slacking.

Okay, so I'll keep this update short and try to get back to my recapping of the first half of '09 over the weekend. Since I no longer have a camera I'm a little short of pics but I'll try to snatch some off of facebook to make up for it.

On the work front I've been in contract negotiations and renegotiations for the last month or so and I'm trying to gauge whether or not its in my best interests to stay at my company. Talks have been somewhat fruitful but there still remains much to be discussed and the clock is slowly ticking on the last 4 months of my contract. Hopefully we can come to an solution within the next month so I can at least start mapping out the next few years of my life. Will I be here in Korea 2010? Will I be back in the US? Will I be somewhere completely new? The next few months should help me find my answer. Stay tuned for updates.

Outside of that, I've been getting out a lot with friends lately as is my tradition in the summer months. I've attended a few birthday parties, a few random gatherings and will soon be going to my annual round of farewell parties as some of my teacher friends begin their inevitable treks home. I haven't done as much travelling as I would have liked but hopefully the end of this month (Jeju-do?) and next month (Japan?) will remedy that. I also hope to get a few more Han River gatherings and barbecues in as well. I hope to be posting pictures soon.

So until the weekend, that's my update.

Fuck You, Freddy Krueger

This is a break in my 6 month recap quest and for a very good reason.

Background:

I was engaged in deep conversation with Liam over a beer as has been frequently happening lately and we were discussing some of the finer questions in life such as:

"If you could murder 3 people and get away with it, who would they be?"
"If you could be friends with 5 fictional characters, who would they be?"
etc.

So while talking about these oh deepest of questions, we went off on some random tangent and somehow got on the topic of Freddy Krueger.

Freddy Krueger used to scare the shit out of me when I was a kid. I don't exactly remember why but the cheese grater face and sharp knives probably had something to do with it. I hadn't spend a single iota of time in the past 15 years thinking about him until yesterday and now that I've given him some proper thought at my adult age, I've decided that Freddy Krueger is a dick.

Who the fuck attacks people after they go to sleep? That's a real bitch move. I come home from a long day at work, spend a few short moments entertaining myself, and as soon as I go to sleep, BAM!, some fuck with scissor fingers and a Dennis the Menace adult size sweater pops out and kills me. I can't even get a little REM sleep? Really? You, my friend, are a dick. Grow some balls and try to kill me when I'm awake or better yet, when I'm on my way to work. At least then you helped me out a little.

Conclusion:

Fuck you, Freddy Kreuger.

Christmas '08 Recap

Christmas is traditionally when people gather together with family and/or friends to eat, drink and be merry.


When you are an expat it's pretty much the same except your friends take the spot of your family and a lot more emphasis is put on the "drink" aspect.


Such was my 2008 Christmas.


Me and some friends managed to don our gay apparel and do some caroling around the major areas of Seoul and made about 60,000 Won in 20 minutes to donate to the Salvation Army. The reason for only doing it for about 20 minutes was because we kept getting kicked out of locations by angry security guards with no penises. After that, we went out and celebrated.

At the tree in Samsung Station

Close up of at the tree in Samsung Station

In the subway, waiting for the train

Awesome and Creepy. The bro-chain me, dude-wife and Glen are making is the best.


Now, while this didn't happen on Christmas Day (I explained my actual Christmas in a previous post), when I think of "Christmas 2008" these are the memories that pop in my head.

Lallygaggin'

That's essentially what I've been doing so far in 2009 in regards to my blog.

I'm not going to lie, there have been times where I have considered scrapping this internet ego-stroke altogether and given the frequency of my posts lately I'm sure some of you probably thought I've done just that.

Well, I haven't. Not yet anyways.

In an attempt to catch up to where I should be, I'm going to put up a series of posts about the last six months or so and probably glaze over things I may have posted about already. These may or may not contain pictures but I will add them when necessary.

I will be starting out with a new breakdown of Christmas 2008 and work my way forward until I get to present day May including my most recent trip to Japan. Hopefully I can get dude wife to post his Chicago pics by late this week.

Expect quick succession people!

So in the meantime, enjoy this video of me jumping into the pool at Club Ageha in Tokyo.

An Example of Problem Solving at a Korean Company

Technically its an American company that I work at but when 99% of the workforce are Koreans, I guess its pretty safe to say they are adopting the "when in Rome.." line of cultural relativism pretty well.



(I hate that line by the way)



In any case, here is a recent, personal example of how sometimes problems get "resolved" within a Korean company. Not to perpetuate any blanket stereotypes but when statistical evidence shows your country has the longest work hours of any industrialized country in the world while only barely hanging in the middle half of productivity, you've got some efficiency issues.

So, we've recently started a campaign called "Happy Wednesday" (yeah, I know) here at the ol' company. Essentially it's an attempt at culling some of the extremely obnoxious hours that some of us work here by telling us that no matter what, we have to go home on Wednesdays by 5pm. The first week it came into action we were actually told that the lights were going to be turned out on us by 5:30.

Yeah, so let me process this through my limited mental facilities.

Instead of attacking the REAL issues as to why we have so much work to begin with, we are just being told that no matter what, we have to go home at 5pm. We have to tell our clients this (Leave at 5pm?!?! Inconceivable!) and also magically make our work disappear for the day. If for some reason we get past all of the managers telling us to shoo and end up working past 5pm anyways, we need to get a special form endorsed by three separate managing entities. I don't know about you but to me this seems pretty shitheaded.

Let's discuss the realities of this campaign.

1) It was obviously cooked up by HR, a group who is routinely involved in making decisions about things they have no idea about.
2) It really does nothing but push the work load from one day to another essentially making people now have to work later during the other days of the week or on the weekend.
3) It addresses the real issues behind the obnoxious workload by....ignoring them.
4) Is something I suspect was created so they could put up a bunch of dumb yellow posters with smiley faces all over the office with the words "Happy ____" on them.
5) Is obviously completely fucking stupid.

Too add to this, not 2 days after the first week of this goes by I hear this conversation:

Manager type: "Hey, how is everything going?"
Grunt type: "Oh hey, pretty well. Just trying to finish this up and get out of here on time today."
Manager type: "On time? It isn't Happy Wednesday you know."

Yeah.

First post of 2009 in March

Yeah, I'm a douchebag.

Now that we got that out of our system, let's move on.

So lots of stuff has been happening since the last time I updated back around Christmas. I don't have a lot of time to get into too much detail so here is an abbreviated list:

*Christmas Eve was kind of balls to the walls with drinking so I spent most of Christmas Day nursing a hangover and eventually watched the new "The Day the Earth Stood Still". One of the most horrible movies I've ever seen. You have brought shame on us part-asian-but-still-look-white guys with that one, Keanu.

*New Years in Busan was great fun. Though some 14 of us ended up freezing our asses off at the heater-less hotel room the first night after coming in at 7am from the clubs, the second night in the uber-pimp new hotel room more than made up for it. I love sashimi.

*New team and new opportunities at work. I now head up "Global Services" which gives me a great chance to make some new sales. I've been doing just that with about fifty grand worth of new sales so far since January. New ideas currently brewing for work, will post more after I've implemented them.

*First basketball game of the new year and bam! re-dislocated my left pinky finger. Fuck you ball. It is currently shaped like a pig tail and actually set me back about 2 months for lifting since I couldn't grip anything. Of course I used that as an excuse to stop going to the gym altogether and have managed to gain back a little of my former belly. Nothing like a little extra padding for the cold months. I'll get back into it after my trip home.

*Trip to Japan for my birthday with Micah. Managed to meet up my bro and thanks to Doug's hospitality had a nice place to sleep and shower every night. The big night out was Saturday when we did the all you can eat/drink boat ride, all you can drink karaoke and Club Ageha, the biggest club in Asia. Doug has a video of me jumping into the roof pool so bug him for the links after he posts it. Of course my brother in his infinite wisdom decided to go out, waste all of his battery power trying to call us at 8 in the morning and then make me, Doug and Micah come to him while calling my Mom and asking her to call me. Douche nozzle. Despite his best efforts, we finally managed to meet up and lo and behold, he has 11,000 yen in his pocket. For those of you who don't know, 11,000 yen is nowhere near enough money to have a good night out in Tokyo so of course big bro had to spot him. All in all a great time. Thanks to all for coming out and extra special thanks to ol' felkface Doug for letting us crash.

*My B-day/Micah's going away party. I wanted to have another party in Seoul for my birthday and since dude wife was leaving we decided to mash the two together. We made it a "silver suit" party since Korea is the only place that still sells these abortions from the 80s. Here is the result of that:

Uber-pimp, I know. From left: Dude wife, Glen, Drew, Shaun, Me, Kevin and Dave.

It's sad to see another friend of mine leave Korea but I've been there and done that so many times now its become routine. The party was probably the best one we've had when you include all of the efforts for the look so we sent ol' Micah back with style. Cheers to us.

* Next week: Back to Chicago!

I'll post more once I get back. Until then, look at this: