two bits of news

1. First bit of news: I went to the Seoul Gangnam Police Station today—a much larger branch than the station that's practically next door to my apartment. I noticed the angry sky overhead and idly wondered whether I should go back inside and get an umbrella. One Fuck it later, and I was in a cab and on my way, umbrella-less. 

When I got to the police station, I did a horrible, nasty, lazy thing: I didn't use any Korean. I merely showed a printed, translated sign saying I needed to get my fingerprints on an FD-258 fingerprint card to send to the the FBI to get my criminal background check. The staff was all ladies, and they were a wee bit flustered at having to use English and find a form that probably isn't requested much in their daily work. Several ladies ended up helping me in tag-team fashion, and I was told how to add my own fingerprints to the form (which they found, with relieved cries of "Here it is!"). They said that if I did the fingerprinting wrong, there was a chance the form could be rejected by the FBI. Forms, actually—plural. I had to do this three times: one fingerprint from each hand for the small squares, then a set of four fingerprints from each hand, plus a thumbprint from each hand. Like this:

Not my prints, and my forms were black-and-white photocopies.

I had to do the above three times, which took a while and involved a lot of fingertip-cleaning with wet wipes (what Koreans call "water tissue"). I'm worried that I didn't do all of the prints quite right, but I'm close to sending all three forms to the FBI, so something had better work. I'm also worried that the police station's forms, which were already photocopied in nature, might not be accepted by the FBI, which might prefer the blue-colored standard you see above (and which I remember from previous fingerprinting).

In the States—where, yes, I have been fingerprinted—the police normally have an officer very personally guide you through the fingerprinting process. He manually rolls your finger on the ink pad, then rolls it again on the paper, then re-inks you for that final four-finger press plus the thumbprints.

As I left Seoul Gangnam Police Station with my three fingerprinted pages (cost: nothing), the rain started to fall hard. Fuck. I rolled the fingerprint forms up, stuck them in a pocket under my untucked shirt, caught another cab back to my place (wrinkling the forms in the process), and rode back to my studio. I do feel like a shit for not speaking any Korean to anyone, but maybe it made the ladies feel good to help the hapless foreigner.

I'm still not sure whether they even entered my fingerprints into their records. I do know that, years ago, I got fingerprinted in South Korea as part of some annoying immigration procedure (visa? can't remember). So I know I'm on record somewhere.

2. Second bit of news: I got a reply to my email expressing interest in that R&D job. Craigslist is no good for me when I want to post my own "EFL tutor available" ads, but it's not bad when I look for possible openings. I found one over the weekend and sent in the requested photo and resume. Boom—this afternoon, I got an email. Now, the catch is that the job ad hid the fact that the advertisers are a recruiting agency, which I think means they charge the hiring company a chunk of my first year's salary as their fee. Vultures.

I'm in dialogue with the recruiter right now via email; she explained the job (R&D work similar to what I'd been doing for ten years—textbook content creation, proofreading, editing). I don't know whether I'm going to end up with this job; the company's bosses might take one look at my old, gray self and run screaming from the room. The advertised pay is around half of what I'd been making at my previous place of work, but aside from some revolving debt and a chunk of credit-card debt, I'm not financially weighed down by anything, so in truth, I'm fine with a lower salary. I've never been one to aspire to fame and fortune.

And if I take this job, I won't have to worry about spending $285 to send my two diplomas and my FBI background check to the States to get apostilled (the FBI check would have had to be sent separately anyway since I don't have it yet, having only just gotten the fingerprint forms). This will mean I got my fingerprints today for nothing, but since today's trip cost me only two cab rides, I'm not going to complain. And speaking of complaining: I can't seriously see myself at this (still hypothetical) new job for more than a year, so I need to coordinate what I plan to do. The job's contract will end on a certain date; the rental contract will end next year on a different date; in the meantime, I plan to keep my head down, do whatever work they ask me to do, not ask questions or make loud complaints, nor even write about the job—even obliquely—on this blog. I'm just going to stay quiet and brunt my way through it all for a year. This is my eating bitter. And I've learned a lot of lessons about what complaining gets you.

At this point, I'd say there's a 90% chance I'll say yes to this work. The opportunity kind of came out of nowhere. I'd say there's also a 90% chance the job is going to suck balls, but you never know. Maybe I'll find myself in a room full of beautiful, young women who are actually nice. At some point, I might offer my services as a cook to host office parties, maybe once every two months or so. Of course, I know nothing about how big this new R&D team will be, so I'll need to get a feel for the new (hypothetical) workplace before I open my mouth.

You never know what the future will bring.

What's really sad is the ass-kicking that awaits me from Murphy's Law. I'm absolutely sure that a peach of a university job will appear after I've been hired by this place, and I'll spend my year quietly chafing over missed opportunities.