One Month Left
On Friday September 13th of 2013, I will walk out of my present place of work and never return to it. Never.
My immediate plan is to hike across what we can call “Korea’s Appalachian Trail” (Baekdu-Daegan). I will get around to posting more about this, as the plan comes together. Things open up in mid-September. After the long hike, there are other possibilities. I will be in the USA before the year is out.
Two Years Ago
Around this time in August of 2011, I interviewed with M.G., then the British “foreign head teacher” at my job here. The interview lasted twenty or thirty minutes. I was impressed that a foreigner was giving the interview. Korean employers, frankly, arouse a high level of suspicion in me. Hearing a British voice was really relieving and even exciting. I took the job, mostly because I thought a foreigner giving the interview was a very good sign. I started a month later, mid-September 2011. Twenty-three months after that, here I am.
[M.G. (b. 1985), who gave the interview, became a friend. We played soccer, ping-pong, basketball. His girlfriend E.R., also from England, worked with us too. M.G. was quiet and cerebral; E.R. was upbeat and pragmatic. We can say they complemented each other. E.R. baked delicious cakes. Declining them was impossible. They left in late June 2012.]
In the next weeks, coming up to the glorious End, maybe I’ll do more substantive “retrospectives”, but maybe not. Maybe it’s good to just avoid the subject. I’ve tried and usually succeeded. As that bland old advice goes, “If you can’t say something good about something, don’t say anything at all.” Various people have given me that advice. It is good advice. If they let me talk to my replacement, though….