today's agenda

I'm most likely not going to make the May 12 application deadline to apply for that Cheongju University position, so I might as well write Cheongju off. So far, no other university job ads on Dave's ESL Cafe. Today, then, I have several items on the agenda:

1. Visit the bank and send $500 to my US account.
2. Visit my real-estate office and sign the new rental contract. New, higher rent kicks in next month (W770,000 from W735,000). Boy, I'm really looking forward to that.
3. Visit the local police station and see about (a) getting fingerprinted, (b) keeping a copy of the fingerprint document to send (or scan and send) to the US FBI, and (c) getting a copy of my local criminal background check.
4. Get a haircut. It's been six weeks.
5. Find and gather documents to send to the US State Department (basically, my diplomas and, eventually, a copy of my FBI background check) to get apostilled so I can apply for other university work in Korea.
6. Take a walk. Lift some weight.
7. Work on my movie-review book. I'm close to finishing the main ms.

A few thoughts:

I'm kind of hoping to find a job that has the same document requirements as Daegu Catholic University had back in the day (2013). DCU asked only for a local criminal background check. Cheongju U., by contrast, wants the FBI form. I had emailed Cheongju U. over the weekend to ask whether any compromise on documents is possible. No reply yet, but it's only Monday morning. If the uni says no, then I'm definitely not going to make the May 12 paperwork-submission deadline. Also, if the uni says nothing this week, then I'm not going to make the May 12 deadline. Not tragic: There will be many, many more uni positions opening up over the summer, with the flood of job ads starting this month. And in the meantime, I'm going to try knocking once again on KMA's door to see about part-time work as a lecturer there. A few hundred extra bucks a weekend might be nice.

For the past week and a half, I've had some rather severe back pains that came out of nowhere—this despite (or because of?) all the core exercises I'd been doing. Getting back into the groove is a big priority this week. Muscles detrain pretty quickly.

I feel sorry for my poor undergrad and grad-school diplomas. They simply sit in a closet. I've never hung them proudly on a wall, either at home or at the office (I've never had that kind of private office anyway). All these diplomas ever do is travel across the ocean once every decade or so. Otherwise, they sit in darkness. My Georgetown diploma is large, written in Latin, and sitting inside a plastic tube, waiting to be shipped somewhere. My Catholic U. diploma came with its own leather-padded folder, so it's never been rolled up. I should probably take both diplomas someplace to get them color-scanned so I can instantly send the files wherever they need to go. Oh, my poor diplomas.

Meanwhile, if I don't get everything done today, it's no biggie.