Admin Stuff

I'm aware that you can't scroll down the page, but haven't been able to figure out why with my limited tech knowledge. I sent a request for technical assistance to Blogger Support, and those nice people over there got back to me within one day! This, at a free site. Makes you wonder why customer service at the telephone, gas, and electricity companies can't be better.

Anyway, a tech guy named Graham wrote back that my page is published correctly, but that there's a browser issue in Internet Explorer that causes this sometimes. They're working on it, but in the meantime, I've made some script changes that Graham suggested, and it seems to have worked. If you still have problems, Graham suggests: "refreshing or resizing your browser window will usually make the page appear correctly. We apologize for the inconvenience." Ditto.

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Feeling Lazy

It's Sunday afternoon and I've finished reading Q is for Quarry, the mystery I bought for the plane ride back here, except I never got to read it because I met my brother's friend on the plane. I should do some Korean homework as I've got a lot to catch up on, but having done three and a half hours of it yesterday, I'm not feeling so inspired today. Sometimes I worry that I've gotten way too lazy to go to law school.

On Friday, I went down to my former work place and met with the HR guy. I told him the small lie that I hadn't been planning to work, but since they needed someone, I was willing to work until they found a replacement (they interviewed four or five candidates but none were satisfactory to the editor-in-chief of publications, a rather difficult to please character) or until December, whichever came first. (December, you see, is when I'm planning to go to Southeast Asia.)

I also said that I didn't want to work every day, because the one-hour commute from school was too tiring to do on a daily basis (see what I mean about lazy?) and that I'd work three days a week. Feeling magnanimous, I said they could pick the days.

They haven't gotten back to me yet, but I figure that they'll probably pick me up. After all, having someone three days a week for two months is better than having no one to do the nitpicky editing grunt work.

After the requisite hello-ing and how-are-you-ing with various friends there, I went to an interview at an educational institute that my dad had set up. The director, a no-nonsense Korean woman who went to college in the States, said she'd like to have me teach there. If I liked, she said, she'd state in her next newspaper ad that a Yale grad would be teaching an SAT class. I'm not sure if it was my extreme fatigue that day, but director's demeanor left me a little chilly, and I called her yesterday to turn down her offer, saying merely that I wasn't in a position to take on extra work at this time.

Lazy? Afraid to try something new? Hm.

I did call Erica, the woman who's been sending tutorees my way, and I think she might send a couple more. Yesterday, though, I suddenly felt icky about the whole tutoring thing. The two tutoring jobs I've had were fun for me, as well as lucrative, but it really is all about the rich getting richer. I had heard from someone that tutoring is illegal in Korea, and when I asked my dad yesterday, he said yes, it was. Poorer parents complained that only moneyed families could afford to hire the tutors that gave kids the edge in the admissions game, so it was decreed that tutors have to register with the government. Freelancers like me are breaking the law.

I could argue that I'm helping only kids who are applying to U.S. colleges, and because of the way financial assistance works in the U.S., only rich families could afford to send their kids there anyway, but ultimately, yes, I'm just another part of the system keeping the People down.

I've got a couple other ideas up my sleeve that I need to pursue in regard to working here, so maybe I can avoid becoming The Man.

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Last Thought
I feel more confident than I did when I left Korea for the U.S. six weeks ago. Why is that? Maybe it happened during the course of the year here, but I had to go back home to see how much I changed. Maybe it's the haircut and the hand-me-downs from my sister-in-law, which are of a quality that I'd never buy for myself. Those things, I think, made people see me differently in the States, and here as well. It's as if the image of me in other people's minds became more visible, or more clearly defined, whereas before I was a little cloudy, a little muddy, a little forgettable. In particular, I sense a difference in the way men look and interact with me. Perhaps it's the confidence from the new clothes or the new clothes that bring about this change. Interesting.