being paid feels good

Three good things I learned today:

(1) The very nice, very cute Shinhan Bank teller in Daechi-dong told me that I can now go to any Shinhan Bank and expeditiously do an international transfer. I did have to start the application process from scratch, not only because it had been several years since the last time I had used Shinhan for international wire transfers, but also because I had changed my passport number in the interim: my old passport expired while I was in the States, so when I re-upped for a new passport, I was given a new passport number. It also didn't help that I didn't have my alien-registration card (ARC); normally, that's the piece of ID that Korean banks want to see. My ARC is still somewhere in the bowels of Immigration; I can't pick the card up until Friday, September 26. But the good news is that I just need to bring my passport to any Shinhan branch, and I can wire money to the States quickly and easily from now on.

(2) My Dongguk pay was W400,000 more than I'd expected to get. Based on my experience with salary deductions at my previous job, I had expected to receive only 80% of my gross salary—about 2.3 million won. Instead, I received 2.7 million won, which was a very welcome surprise. There's still a chance, though, that this first payment is an anomaly; as I recall, that was the case at my previous place of work (there was also a month in which extra deductions were taken out of my pay, thus evening my average monthly payments out). So until I see three months in a row at 2.7 million won, I'm not going to breathe easy.

(3) My Golden Goose pay, which still hasn't arrived, will be for a full million. That's W200,000 more per month than I was expecting, so I'm certainly not complaining. If things really are as peachy as they now seem, this means I'm getting W600,000 a month more than I had budgeted for. The Golden Goose has also asked me to show up for work this Saturday, as there's a publication deadline that needs to be met. More work = more pay.

So I did a bit of shopping today; there's more shopping yet to do, but for the moment I'm just glad to have a measure of purchasing power again. Oh, yes: I also immediately paid off two personal debts today, and I'll pay my yeogwan hosts tonight when I leave the campus office (yes: I went straight from Daechi-dong to Dongguk campus, where I'm now writing this entry). When the Golden Goose finally pays me—within the next few days, I hope—I'll discharge another two personal debts. In October, another two... and in November, I'll pay my last remaining personal debt, thank Cthulhu. After that, I can finally start saving up key money for a decent apartment. And after that, sometime next year, I'll be able to begin paying down my real debts in earnest. Assuming Dongguk doesn't fire my ass.


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