Korean Job Discussion Forums

[mindmetoo]

Before I came to Seoul an old boss who taught here in the 1990s, before the IMF crisis even, told me that anyone he met who was over thirty and an ESL teacher "had a story". And not a good story. Divorce, gambling/drinking problems, etc.

Anyone work someone with a "story"? I guess this is kind of like a freaky waegook thread, although one could be pretty hard done by and grizzled without being too freaky.

I can't say I've met any waegook with a tragic story, although I am reminded I had some Korean woman messaging me on MSN with a rather tragic story. She was from Busan but working in Seoul. She was living with her boyfriend, a Nigerian guy. She basically left her family, friends, and most of her clothes in Busan to be with her "love" in Seoul. See he was an independent business man, in the way many Nigerians here seem to be in some kind of "business" which involves drinking at night and sitting in the Itaewon Burger King during the day. (What does this job pay?)

She got the apartment, paid the key money, bought the appliances, lent him 100,000s of won for his "business", etc. In return, he made her stay at home when he was out. She couldn't see a movie as this was wasting money on silly things. When they did go out, she had to dress like a ho: heels, low cut tops, short skirts. But of course she couldn't dress like that if she wanted to go out alone to buy milk or whatever.

Sad, sad woman.

Last I heard from her she was asking me if I or anyone I knew wanted to buy a washing machine as she was planning on leaving her boyfriend.

(My boss, after Korea, went to India. I asked him what he did in India. "Basically, smoked a lot of hash," he answered back without a moment of hesitation.)

[hellofaniceguy]

We all have stories. Every single last one of us. Most are running from something, someone, somewhere, etc. Some are running...but at a slower pace. Others are racing. Some are hoping to get by just another day until something better comes along while other keep passing by something better. We all have only one life...and then we die...and death is forever.
So...for now...I just keep running and enjoying!!! Cause I may not wake up tomorrow!

[Ya-ta Boy]

I take exception to the glittering generality that everyone here over 30 ""had a story'. And not a good story" and was " running from something, someone, somewhere".


I will admit to having a serious mid-life crisis at 45 after teaching high school for 20 years. But I don't think that qualifies as 'running' in the sense I think the OP meant it.

I think a lot of people deliberately choose to be here. In my opinion, generalities generally tell more about who says them than what is said.

[inkoreaforgood]

[canuckistan]

Not so much as "heard" but saw.

Worked with this guy the 1st year I was in Korea. Fun guy, good looking, but with a terrible gambling problem and an even worse marriage to an incredibly unstable, violent wife who'd claw him to shreds at night. Add quite a bit of drinking to that.
He'd burned through thousands and thousands of dollars he'd won in Vegas or had made through running poker rooms in Japan. Big money. Huge debts. Constantly broke. Living on friends' couches. Repeat cycle over and over again.

I realized just how bad it had him when he was absolutely desperate
to get on a gambling internet site, going through his wallet trying out the various credit cards to register, finding many cancelled/no good, exhanging calls with the gambling site operators in the Carribean from the PC bang (!!!) to try to get an account......all of this 20 minutes before we had to teach a class!
I was watching him lose it.
I knew he was cooked for life with this stuff.
Last I heard, he was saving up to go to Vegas again.

[mindmetoo]

[Thunndarr]

Knew an unfortunately looking bastard with gout, who spent his time trying to meet attractive women online or just purchase a wife on the internet. He got fired, for, among other things, being ugly.

[captain kirk]

I've met a lot of young people who are messed up. Not in any abnormal way, but if they were doing the same thing when they are in their forties they they'd be a freaky old waegook. Yeah, so I marvel at them. At the bar last Friday night there's a guy in his twenties, working in a haggie, talking about how he 'has to leave Korea because he's becoming a semi-chronic alcoholic'. Of course he was joking, he dances around impishly smiling like a jester. Like, 'where's the thrill, where's the thrill?'. Is there gonna be a fight, there was one here last night, and 'watch my back'. Drinks until eight in the morning and then starts a block shift at the haggie starting at 3pm. When I was under thirty I was a dancing snoopy, the carefree grasshopper, and life was a limitless experiment. At the same time, this perfectly normal guy blowing out and having a rocking time in Korea can look at someone forty working a haggie and get spooked. They don't see another person when they call 'freaky old waegookin', they get a jolt of terror that it could be them in ten, twenty years. But they don't, at twenty-something, know what it's like, the perspective, to be forty. All they see is decay, not having made it. By the time one is forty one doesn't have the urging admonitions of one's parents not far off; 'eat your breakfast for school', 'study or you'll be a dolt', 'get good grades in college or else' and blabla. The only thing I see as freaky is people hurting themselves, and others. Go to the bar and check out the excessive drinking and carrying on, though I'm no puritain, and wonder how they can complain about teaching in a haggie, yet go hog-wild drunken retarded on the weekends. Then begrudgingly back to the haggie, which is 'not having made it'. Oh woe! As long as you're self-possessed to the degree you're not hurting yourself that's having made it, in my arrogant opinion. Talk to 'old people' and they're happy to be alive, that's it. No freaky anything.
Met some people who had bad jobs which were wearing them out physically, then they got their degree, and off to Korea. That'd be me as well. Never really met any freaky waegook teachers. People going thru some stuff at times. Chronic drinking looks pretty freaky to me, but that's a state too. Totally blathering red faced state of oblivion. Do foreign teachers stare at each other like Koreans stare at them? Seems that way. 'Oh, there's a foreigner, he's as freaky as I feel being stared at by all these Koreans. Dammit all to heck he's weird looking, must be some tragic reason why he's here. Poor guy's paying off his student loan, loser! Freak!'. While the other guy thinks the foreigner looking at him like he's a freak is a freak himself. Freak show!

[mindmetoo]

[FUBAR]

[gajackson1]

Maybe later, but I had a Canadian co-worker/roomie who quit our school, told everyone here he was going back to Canada; told his family he was staying, and wound up drinking Korean scotch & popping pills until he went into a coma & died.

Can embassy staff show up, all pissed off, at our school - wondering why we weren't worried about him being gone for 5 days.

Obviously, no one had any idea what happened. I'd call that pretty freakin sad.

G.

[shakuhachi]

Wasnt there a guy on this board that failed to get laid after one year in Korea? I would consider that a pretty sad story.

[VanIslander]

I met a teacher who is running away from a wife and two children, after having failed at his small business, and is in Korea chasing a local woman who strings him along on superficial dinner dates for months in exchange for expensive gifts and the prospects of a relationship that probably won't ever happen because he's too timid and passive to get past go.

I think that's sad.

[Swiss James]

Following up a story about a guy killing himself with booze and pills in an lonely apartment with some wisecrack about a guy who hasn't been laid is pretty sad.

[shakuhachi]