Where all the...

... foreigners are expected to be astonishingly, irredeemably, heartbreakingly stupid.

Returned to the bank today to restore the check to my account. Forty-five minutes later, victory of a sort!* The teller called Avalon again, (at least this time I was right there, and it wasn't a huge and unpleasant surprise) and spent somewhere between 20 and 30 minutes in back-and-forth with one of the Korean teachers in the elementary campus (not even in my own office anymore, this privacy thing is really a winner) and with me. Most of it was them trying to convince me I really didn't want to put the check back in. Some minutes were spent talking to other bank people, and a great many were spent frowning at the screen and tapping away, as though some magical key combination would make me leave. (I can't really blame her, though. After the whole check thing and the ATM incident, I imagine they have flagged me at that bank. There will come a day when they will bar the doors if they see me coming).

The interpreter started by telling me the woman was sure I could send the check. I explained that the post office woman had not agreed. Was I sure? Well, she had definitely refused to send it and written down the words, "banned item" for me, just to be clear, so yes. Pretty sure. Did I know the interpreter had an American husband to whom she had sent money successfully through the post before? No, and congratulations to you both, but I was still sure I did not want to continue carrying around a functional cashier's check, redeemable at Citibank. I wanted the money back in my account. I understand accounts, I understand money that stays in them. This was truly All I Wanted. I was warned  that there would be a pretty serious penalty for undoing the check. Was I totally sure I didn't want to go back to the post office and try again? In the end, I got to pay $22 to unwrite the thing.

From the exchange, it eventually came out that it is not illegal to post a money order. It is illegal to send a check through the mail without an envelope. I spent ten minutes getting told by the post office that my check was a banned item, and a further forty-five minutes today undoing it, because the post-office lady thought I was showing it to her with the intent of sending it through the mail without an envelope.


Really? Really, Korea?

*This is the traditional call of triumph in the perennially Pyrrhic war of the Individual versus The Established Bureaucracy. It is optimally accompanied by the also-traditional Three Big Finger Twirls.

This Author as a Person of Interest to Men in Fedoras

Internet, I am a suspicious character! Like anyone else, I'd like to be writing an entry with this title about how someone looking just like Indiana Jones in his heyday is remarkably interested in me on multiple levels. Sadly, I am writing because I have had a paranoia-inducing experience that leads to late-night, wide-eyed wonderings about G-Men.

As for anyone who earned money in the US last year, I spent the days leading up to the Ides of April crouched over the many lines, forms, and checklists of the taxpayer. For the first time in my young life, I owed the government more than it owed me. Yay, solvency! Unfortunately, my solvent crowns and pounds and guineas were not banking compatible with the IRS. I needed to use my American account for my American taxes (funny thing, that). Having a whopping $40 in the US and no time to move money from here to there, my dad kindly floated me the amount I needed. It was supposed to be a matter of a few days of post time to resolve the issue. My taxes were paid, in the meantime I would get a money order and mail it, for less than a wire transfer, and scant days later, everything would be peachy. For the record, I am neither a mouse nor a man, but I have a lot of sympathy for them and their plans.

First, I went to the bank, my bank, trying to get a money order, because I was not sure I could buy one at the post office. Because they are sent everywhere from the United States, I foolishly thought they would be available to send to the US in most/all places. It took a good bit of convincing that yes, I wanted a money order and no, I couldn't/didn't want to wire money, that being the normal Korean thing to do. I filled out more forms than I think I should have had to, and finally got a check-like thing that could be redeemed at Citibank in North America. Triumph.

Then, I went to the post office, where the language barrier barred me from getting anything more than frustration out of my encounter with the service woman. I wanted to be sure I got the stupid check insured, as it was quite a bit of money, so I made no bones about the fact that it was a check. I even showed it to her. She spoke very fast and then went to find another woman who took great pains to show me that it was money, or of a value above zero, and therefore could not be sent. I was naturally confused, as I had asked at the bank that this be a money order, because I wanted to send it to my father in the US. At the bank, they assured me that yes, they had given me the right thing, a money order for the sending to people. I pressed the post-office lady to tell me more, but what ended up happening was that she took further great pains to tell me that what I had was paper, not money. You may notice this neatly countered her previous statement about why she couldn't send the thing. Without more Korean, I could not hope to prevail, so I left.

It was recommended that I simply submerge the check in a letter and send the letter certified mail. Really wanting to just send the damned thing and have done with it, I wrote a (quite nice, actually) letter, bought an attractive blue envelope, and put the package together. I wasn't able to get to the post office again in the same day, so I waited and thought I'd send it today.

Here's the paranoia: someone called the school, asking about me and the money I withdrew. They tell me it was the bank, though my coworkers managed to tease me for about ten minutes that it was the government looking for me, but I am still very creeped out. The bank has my cell phone number. They do not need to call my employer about my banking activity and should not have done so. Maybe they did it for ease of communication, knowing my Korean is crap, but they just spoke to a secretary, outlined the story of it for her, and went on their way. I only found out about it because the front desk lady came in and spoke at length to my head teacher, who then asked me about it. That is neither common sense nor respect for my privacy as a client and it is extremely unnerving.

The annoyance in this to me is the whole right hand/left hand, not-knowing-what-the-other's-up-to element. I was specific at the bank about what I wanted and what I was planning to do. Assurance, assurance, huzzah, huzzah. The post office was evidently not apprised that this was supposed to be an assured and huzzah-ful affair. Apparently, per the teachers I work with, it is common knowledge that sending money through the post is forbidden. I would have thought that commonality would have somehow trickled up, down or sideways to the people at the bank. Furthermore, it's my money! It's not like I was sending a check on credit and they needed to investigate my risk factor. It is nobody's business if I want to use that money to repay my parents or buy myself a dancing hedgehog farm.

Anyway, am still irked, put out, and a bit on the paranoid side, but slightly mollified by the mental image of the dancing hedgehogs. May your days be full of respect for your personal information, and ease of navigating torturous inter-institutional waters.

Hello, Internet. I have been absent from your haunts because I have been sick. A lot. More. Plus. In addition. Also. I am now at the point that although it sounds like my lungs are trying to make a break for it, they are really just grumbling about how they could secede if they really wanted to. During this latest and greatest negotiation of systems various in the pursuit of rest for the relief from fever and its accompanying throes, I renewed my faith in the whole nationalized medicine thing, and lost my faith in bureaucratic goings-on, namely in my hagwon.

So I was sick before, and then it went away for a bit after Dr. #1, and then it came back and brought all its friends. One of its friends was a fever, which left me shivering and miserable on Easter Eve. I will not swear that there was no pity party. There may have been hats.

Easter day saw me trucking down to the 24/7 clinic where I met my boss (who very nicely came and took me to the doctor) and saw a new doctor.  He spoke very nice English, gave me a prescription for some spiffy drugs, and sent me on my way. My boss was very sympathetic and I went home as hopeful for a swift recovery as I could be. I should note here that my concept of "recovery" is the one inculcated from childhood in most Americans (I think). As most school systems seem to believe, you return to public life when you have spent 24 hours free of fever, lest you endanger said public. I thought this was common knowledge/sense, but it is apparently a Western conceit.

The following day, still feeling like death despite drugs, I phoned my boss, to double check that no, I should not come in to work. It was like suggesting that plastic sheep were running Tajikistan's puppet government in a deadly pursuit of all the world's yams. So weird it's not even wrong. When finally I made it clear that yes, the noise of a convulsing water buffalo that kept coming out of my throat, and its accompanying chartreuse eject, would prevent me from teaching effectively, I was told the process by which I could procure one day of rest.

Step one, return to the clinic. Obtain doctor's note of diagnosis. Bring said note to school. Return home.

If this already seems ridiculous to you (as it does to me, being, in fact, a legal adult employed by the school, not a student thereat), no worries, how it actually happened is even better!

I went to the clinic. I saw a different doctor this time, whose English was distinctly subpar. Eventually I whipped out my legal pad, drew a stick figure of myself and an arrow to the word "hagwon" (in Hangul) with a question mark. The doctor nodded earnestly, told me I needed a shot and meds, and tried to look in my tiny mouth to see my normal-sized throat. I tried to explain that actually, I had been there yesterday, and still had meds to take, I really just wanted a piece of paper saying "yes, sick." He waved that off and conveyed that I should finish those meds and take his new ones next. The shot would happen either way. Lacking the arguing stamina one gets from being afebrile, I may or may not have said, "Whatever, man, it's cool." and followed orders. A nurse gave me a shot in the butt and a paper to show the hagwon, I paid them four dollars, and I left, picking up my new drugs on the way out.

Upon arrival at the hagwon, I brought my paper to my boss and waited as she called the clinic to verify that indeed, they had made that fancy paper just for me, and I had not been hiding some heretofore unexplored knowledge of Korean and forgery. Satisfied on that front, she brought the thing in to show the owner. When he was satisfied, she came back to say I could go home and take my snot with me, but if they could not find someone to teach my middle class, I would still have to come back.

In the end, she did find someone, and I was well pleased that indeed, I could have one recovery day from the flu before I stuffed myself back into rooms full of the germ factories that are children. Huzzah.

It seems so bizarre that a country with such accessible and affordable healthcare has no leeway for the patient to take care of him or her self. There are only two degrees of health, according to Korean employers: death's door, and bloom-of-health. I was told that if I were so sick I was actually in the hospital, I could bring my doctor's note the following day.  Perhaps they are cracking down on wanton attempts to influence doctoral judgment, but it's just plain sense to wait until people aren't contagious before bringing them back to highly populated areas.

Anyway, I am down to only the occasional honking cry of the Enfeebled Anglo, and hope to be all the way better at life and posting things soon.