checklist update and other things

Here's the original to-do checklist with new stuff added on:

☐ cover letter (generic, but changed to fit each university)

✓ résumé
✓ a selfie
✓ scans of school transcripts (undergrad & grad)
✓ a copy of my passport (2 pages)
✓ a copy of my alien-residence card (2 sides—scanned today)

✓ scanned copies of my diplomas (undergrad & grad)

☐ copies of letters of recommendation (I have 1 out of 3 so far)

☐ copies of certificates of employment (I have 2 out of 4 so far)

☐ a copy of a recent "health report" (coming soon)

☐ a copy of the FBI criminal background check (coming in a few weeks)

☐ FBI background-check apostille

☐ completed first movie-review book ms
☐ my phone as a wireless remote control for PowerPoint on my laptop

☐ sample lessons for universities that prove interested in me

☐ sample lessons for KMA (which probably won't hire me)

☐ lessons for private tutoring (lower priority)—test prep & various subjects

☐ more Substack material to last through September

☐ more interactive quizzes for Substack (w/different question formats)

☐ ebook version of the first movie-review book, published

☐ ms for the second movie-review book (long-term project)—start working on it

☐ health check

☐ colonoscopy scheduling

After digging through my normally closed boxes of office stuff, I finally found a small box of thumbtacks. Relief. I went down to the lobby message board to put up my message... and the message board turns out not to be made of cork: It's magnetic. Fuck. So, down I went to the B1 grocery to see whether they sold any small magnets. Nope. I went back up to the first floor 7-Eleven to see whether it had any magnets. The store had anything but: They had clips and stickers. So I've had to order magnets from Coupang; they'll be along tomorrow. One day of my limited time has already been wasted. My ad is still not on the board.

Let's rewind a bit. I found out the message board was magnetic when I tried sinking a tack into the surface, and nothing budged. Out of monkey curiosity, I reached over to a random poster and plucked at the tack-like fastener at one corner. The fastener surprised me by barely resisting as I pulled it off the paper, and when I saw the "tack's" flat bottom, I knew: goddamn magnets. (Made to look like thumbtacks, no less.) And no one thought to warn me? Fuckers.

Anyway, help is on the way, and my tutoring ad will be up on Day 2. Sigh. What a day.

I had left a special message for Monument Visa not to staple their apostilles to my diplomas, but they just wrote back to say that they have to staple the apostilles unless I can give them high-quality scans of the diplomas—scans that they can print out and staple the apostilles to. I resignedly wrote back that they may as well just staple the apostilles to the originals; it's another $20 each for me to send electronic copies, and given my copies' dubious quality, it's probably not worth the extra $40 total. I'll be sending Monument Visa my FBI criminal check once it comes back to me, anyway, so they'll have one more chance to suck out a lot of blood from my wallet. If that's not too weirdly mixed a metaphor.

I did, at least, successfully send the diplomas off. That, too, cost me a pretty penny given the size of the shipping tube.

Nothing in Korea ever moves smoothly from A to B. Especially for foreigners. Putting together my job-application documents these past few weeks has been a royal pain in the ass. Like everyone else in the civilized world, I hate paperwork.