Seoul Hero

South Korea was good to me. In Canada, before I came to South Korea, I had a Master’s degree but nothing better than a McJob, a lot of depression, and no work prospects (largely the fault of my former religious beliefs and my choices in my undergraduate courses). In South Korea, I gained valuable work experience and job knowledge, met and married my wife, became a father and a dad, and became a happy man. I made friends there, too, (the best one being a close friend from graduate school, Ian), and developed a couple of hobbies that have brought me much pleasure.

Although I am not yet certain of my mid-term and long-term employment plans, I am confident that I am no longer in the same boat I was when I left Canada. At the same time, I am thrilled to be back, and I have a whole new appreciation for Canada.
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This is the final post of the Seoul Hero blog. You may keep up with me at Port Coquitlam Odysseus.

My money wire to South Korea was received by my wife’s family. At the same time, my last incoming wire went into my account over a week ago. That brings to the end my waiting for incoming wires.
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I found my alien registration card that I lost in Korea. It was stuck between some other cards in my wallet, and I was so flustered in the airport in Incheon that I went through the cards too quickly.
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Oxford University rejected my application for the M.Phil. program, and I did not apply to Birmingham, due to lack of funds.

I was hesitant to put this up here, but think it’s worth reporting to put up a post about a Korea-bound wire. A family crisis in Korea required me to send a large sum of my own money out. It’s a shame, because it comes out of my line of credit debt, although even with that, my line of credit debt has been greatly reduced from its former maximum and accompanying Visa balance. Moving was incredibly expensive, thanks in part to all my books.

Anyway, I hope that that wire goes through, and I hope that my last wire, the National Pension Service wire, comes in soon. I’m expecting it this week.

…and it’s lovely! Be sure to click on each of the thumbnails (!) in the current post on Burke Mountain and the Deboughville Slough, my favorite place on earth since childhood. Link: nathanbauman.com/odysseus.

My second last wire from Korea came today: my pension from my time at Sookdae. Sookdae uses a private pension that is a poor cousin of its hagwon counterpart. The jury still seems to be out on whether taxes should be charged to foreigners on their pensions: I was initially told I would not have taxes deducted, and then today I found out they were deducted.

I would antipicate only one or two more posts on this blog, now. The retrospective post will come after I receive payment from the National Pension Service. RBC Royal Bank phoned me today to tell me that someone is consistently changing my transit numbers even though I indicate on the form “transit number XXXXX DO NOT CHANGE.” Someone (probably at the Korea Exchange Bank of Canada) is changing it anyway, unfortunately. This causes the funds to be diverted into someone else’s bank account. The error arises from the fact that I originally opened up the account at a branch that was closer to my undergraduate university. In any case, I’m quite grateful to RBC for consistently finding my money quickly (except for that first time a long time ago, of course). Just one more to go, now.

No word yet on the pension from the National Pension Service, but I heard from Sookdae today regarding my pension from them. It seems the individual at the Shinhan Bank in charge of wiring refused to wire my funds without Sookdae providing my pin. There are a few different ways of looking at that, but Sookdae contacted me and I told them my pin. Hopefully the money can be wired quickly.

Perhaps thanks to the work of Telus, whom I emailed again last night, I can now see my website and connect to my email without the use of a proxy! Look for the new blog soon.

First the bad news: between my hosting company (Netfirms) and my internet provider company (Telus) I cannot see my blog or my main site or check my email. I’m posting this note through a proxy server. Thanks to EFL Geek and the Big Hominid for confirming that the blog is visible in South Korea. My statcounter informs me that someone from Netfirms in Ontario did indeed check my blog, as they told me over the phone. I also see from my statcounter that the blog has been visited throughout the day by people in Canada, South Korea, and the US.

Just now I was able to view my new webmail account through a web proxy. I can’t use webmail through the webmail address unless I use a proxy.

Netfirms tells me it’s a Telus issue, and Telus says it’s a Netfirms issue. One thing Netfirms did was to tell me to do a “tracert” search for my domain name. I did that, and after going through my IP address, it passes through a few Telus hops, but then it goes to a few Rogers Shawcable hops, and then it times out and keeps timing out. It appears that Telus and Rogers are creating this technical problem by not recognizing each others’ signals, something a close friend is familiar with through his work with cell phones for a major corporation. If any one can help me out with this, please drop me a line at my email address (which I hope I can continue to view via proxy).

In terms of other causes, last night I kept changing the template on another blog I’m working on (the template preview feature has never worked for me on any computer), and I wonder if that might have created some kind of a problem.

In any case, it’s clear that between Telus, Rogers, and Netfirms, I’m being given the run-around and I can’t view my own website without a proxy in my native land of Canada, while the site is still visible in Korea and in other parts of Canada, in addition to the US. Hopefully I can persuade the technical crews at at least one company to help me out.
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In other news…

Arrivals: my money from YBM B2B Outsourcing; my new driver’s license, and the last package from Korea: the large wedding picture I shipped the day we left.

My return to Canada, together with my wife and baby, is now complete, but passing through Inchon and Vancouver’s airports was highly stressful. At Inchon, where Chae Young’s entire family and many friends had gone to say goodbye to her, I got unnerved by seeing a sign saying one should not keep one’s laptop in the checked-in baggage. This was the opposite of what the travel agent had told me, and necessitated my unpacking the suitcase and my carry on. Then we went to the Singapore Airlines counter, and when they saw the Little Hero’s Canadian passport, they told us we had to go to Immigration, where they charged us a 100,000 Won fine! The problem was a minor one: the Little Hero has two citizenships. If he were traveling as a Korean citizen, he should have been using a Korean passport. I had asked my wife on several occasions to get one for him, but we were too busy. Since he had a Canadian passport, he should have been reported by me to Immigration. In fact, he accompanied me to immigration when I got the extension on my F-2-1 visa, and the immigration staff said nothing about him at all. I guess we were both to blame, but I do think a 100,000 Won fine was excessive and unnecessary.

Speaking of that extension sticker on my legal alien residence card back in Korea, I had thought it a bit strange that they didn’t stamp anything in my passport at that time, back in January. They only put an extra sticker on my card, and I remember thinking “I wonder if they even entered me in the computer system….”

As luck would have it, all the running around at the airport caused me to lose my alien residence card. I had it when I went to Singapore Airlines, and I thought I had it when we went to Immigration. This caused us to be taken into another Immigration room at the last possible moment–after having passed through the new security procedures, where they tried to take away the Little Hero’s nappy cream because it contained more than 100 or 150 mL or whatever of fluid. I did see them confiscate several hundred thousand Won’s worth of a black woman’s skin products. Anyway, I, who had never lost my alien residence card in all my time in Korea, carrying it under my shirt or in my wallet for the two and a half years I was there–I lost my card on the very last day! It was humiliating; in the eyes of Immigration, I was probably just another foreign liar. In fact, they didn’t charge us a second fine, telling Chae Young that one was enough.

The other upshot of that first fine was that we weren’t charged for the extra suitcase, or for the overweight bags!

After the second Immigration office let us go, we had to literally run to get to our plane on time! The actual flight was nine hours and 36 minutes, and was the least turbulent flight I have ever been on, despite the fact that the pilot seemed to think otherwise; he often left the seatbelt sign on. Chae Young and I were relieved by the presence of a bassinet. Oddly, this was, perhaps, the first flight I’ve ever been on where there was absolutely no attention paid to the emergency landing procedures. They didn’t even point out the safety books on the aircraft.

After landing in Vancouver, the Seoul Hero became the Port Coquitlam Odysseus, a potential title for my next blog. How changed things were! We had to wait nearly an hour to get through customs. The customs officials were dressed in American-style dark blue clothes, complete with all sorts of bulges, belts, and what-not. I watched them carefully: not a single one of them cracked a single smile at anybody! How sad! I felt like Frodo Baggins returning to the wasted and now-humorless Shire! I tested one of the officers with an extremely friendly smile and a “how are you?” She replied in an utterly dead voice “I’m fine, thank you, and you?” So different from my previous returns to Canada after international travels! After passing through the initial customs point, she sent us to immigration, and then told me I would have to report to another customs.

We waited about an hour for Chae Young to get processed by Immigration, making our entire post-plane wait a nearly incredible two hours! Fortunately, the baggage carousel was broken, so passengers on our flight had to wait almost that amount of time until they could claim their baggage, meaning that our suitcases had less chance of being stolen or otherwise removed from the belt. At Immigration, Chae Young had her picture taken for her permanent residence card, and was given a lot of information, along with applications for provincial health coverage (three month waiting period), and a S.I.N. card. The people in the actual immigration office were relatively friendly and nice. One of the officers there did me a favor: she stamped my customs card, saving me another hour and possibly some money. Total time spent before we could get our luggage and move through to my waiting family: nearly two hours! I will say that I’m incredibly relieved that that’s all over.
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After leaving sunny Seoul, we were disheartened to find that it had just snowed in Vancouver, and was a chilly 1 degree!
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UPDATES:

My first bank wire came through (the one I sent). Line of credit debt knocked down to $7000, with $800 until the next payday. $500 paid to dad as reimbursement for preliminary medical coverage for the Little Hero and his mother.
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Driver’s license replaced. I left my wallet in a taxi in Seoul not long after arriving, and my driver’s license was in that wallet. For only $17, I was able to get a replacement paper license, with the card version only about a week away. Next week there will be more paperwork to do.
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My parents have completely re-done many of the rooms in our house, making it much nicer. All five of our boxes from Seoul have arrived, and are unpacked. All my books are stored away. The only remaining parcel is our oversized wedding picture, which I mailed from the Gwanghwamun Post Office the day of our flight. My friend Wyatt of the now finished Kimchee and Me blog had trouble getting his picture mailed from a post office, but at the Gwanghwamun branch I paid a total of 70,000 Won for packing and shipping. I will say that the guy there is a master packer. I watched him create a wonderful, padded box out of only a sheet of cardboard and a sheet of styrofoam.
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Also done yesterday: our first visit to a local Korean shopping mart. Chae Young now has a brand new rice cooker, a 40 pound sack of Gyeonggi-do rice at half the price it would be in the Hyundai department store in Seoul, and kimchi. I suspect my family will be eating healthier nowadays, although I will be surprised if any of them pick up a liking for kimchi. At least I got my Cadbury’s Easter Eggs and Smarties!

I will update this blog with at least two more posts from Canada, but this remains the final post from Seoul. Things have been incredibly hectic lately. Chae Young got documentation in English for all of the Little Hero’s vaccinations. We packed everything over a two day period, and then moved all our bags to a hotel in the City Hall area. That was yesterday morning. Then I went to my bank to wire home most of the money from my returned “key money” deposit on our apartment. After that I went to Jongno-sam-ga to YBM’s B2B Outsourcing center. My boss there quit very suddenly, and I wanted to make sure they had my Canadian banking information for my last paycheque from them. Finally, I went to Sookdae to do the same thing there. Then we left for Paju, where my wife wanted to spend the night. We returned today and I met my steadfast friend Ian. I was sad to part from him; we have known each other since graduate school in Toronto beginning in 2000. We will keep in touch, though.

Now I am writing from a smoke-filled internet cafe while my wife does a bit of last minute clothes shopping. Tomorrow we fly out.

So…goodbye from Seoul! I am planning two more posts: a general statement about the highs and the lows of my experience here, and a post which will indicate the bank wires as I receive them (or not): my wire of yesterday, the NPS’s wire, the Sookdae pension wire, and YBM’s wire. I should receive all within a month, in theory. If I encounter unusual culture shock in Canada, I will put up one post on that. Otherwise, that’s it for this blog, but not for my blogging, as I fully intend to continue blogging in Canada. There will be a link to the new site from the last post.
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And now for an announcement of what it is that has me so excited to return to Canada:

1. Easter chocolate and candy!–especially Cadbury’s Easter Eggs and those what-I-call-”sugar eggs”!
2. Pancakes, French toast, Cinnamon Toast, and Brown Sugar! (They have those here, but I never really ate them.
3. Doritos!
4. My bicycle!
5. The Deboughville Slough, the Indian Reserve trail, and all the other parts of the PoCo Trail!
6. Chess
7. My books–those that I didn’t take!
8. My coin collection!
9. Talking in my native language with people on the street!
10. My friends and family!

I’m especially looking forward to introducing my son and wife to my family. Of course, my immediate family already know her from their visit for our wedding, but they have never seen us with our little son. Then again, with a new job (it seems), and a wife and baby, I’m expecting to have a good deal less personal time than I do now. Nevertheless, the entire month of March will be free–a welcome and well-earned vacation, and a time for me to introduce my wife to her new country.
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And I would be remiss if I did not note my sincere thanks to my lovely wife for parting with all that’s familiar to her and coming with me to Canada!

Here’s something I’ve been meaning to write about for a few days. The Little Hero is learning to stand nowadays. If I lie on my side on the bed, he pushes on my arm so that he can thrust himself up. Usually, this isn’t quite enough to help him stand up completely straight, so I help him out. A few days ago, he managed to stand up completely straight all on his own! At that point, he clenched his fists, raised his arms, and yelled out in triumph! His grand moment lasted only less than two seconds, but it was enough! Both he and I were smiling for some time afterwards.

One other thing about the Little Hero: I’m very impressed with his work ethic and his persistence. When I lie on my side on the bed, he continues to try to stand until, long after he has started breathing noisily, he simply runs out of energy.

Sookdae has worked out my pension problem, which turns out not to have really been a problem to begin with. Meanwhile, the director of my old hagwon confirmed that they will be sending my missing pension money to the National Pension Service on March 10th, the same date my contact at the NPS had told me some time ago. As long as the bank transfers go off ok (a BIG if) there should be no further problems.