PAYDAY IS HERE!

I get paid today. Cue Monty Python ass-trumpets, furiously humping angels, and an avalanche of blubbery male nipples. This is going to be a bit weird: normally, when I get paid by my university (still no payment from the Golden Goose, alas), I go right to the bank the same day and transfer 80% of my income to my American bank account. But because today is Wednesday, I'll be at the Golden Goose, which means I'll be doing the wire transfer at the Shinhan Bank in Daechi-dong, not the Shinhan Bank on my campus. That's a bit of a pain in the ass, because the first time I do a wire transfer at any given bank, there's always a ton of paperwork and the process takes forever. So I'm sacrificing my lunch hour tomorrow, just to make sure my US bank account is replenished on time. When I get paid on October 17, that'll be a Friday, which means I'll have to do the wire transfer from the campus branch of Shinhan, which in turn means I'll have to do all that damn paperwork over again from square one (unless it turns out that all the branches are connected, and paperwork for one branch applies to all branches... but that's a little too much to hope for, because that would actually make sense, and this is Korea, home of the non-linear).

I suppose I'll be sending my standard $1,200-$1,400 over to America. Since I now work for a place that pays a larger salary, I expect to keep a little bit extra... but W400,000 of that extra will be claimed by my yeogwan as living expenses (because you just can't fucking win). When the Golden Goose finally pays me its cool million won minus taxes and other deductions (I'm expecting about W800,000), some of that money will also go overseas, and some will be sent to creditors here in Korea. Within two months, I ought to have most of my creditors paid off. If I decide to protract the pain one extra month, I can pay off one final creditor, which means it'll take thirteen months for me to amass the money needed to make a down payment on a decent apartment. I'm not sure what my circumstances will be a year from now. I may have shifted fully over to the Golden Goose by then, earning a cool 4 million won a month for starters (with an eventual shift up to W5 million). Much depends on how well I like teaching at Dongguk. If my students give me suck-ass evaluations, I won't feel welcome and I'll happily leave for greener pastures. If, on the other hand, I rock and roll on my evals, I might just stay another year and keep the Golden Goose on the side as part-time work.

But back to the here and now. Payday comes as an enormous relief. I'll have a wee bit of breathing room and will finally be able to make some necessary purchases. That's certainly something to be thankful for. The curve has reached its inflection point and will now swing upward. Thank Christ for that, eh?


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