tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28968663435943381602024-03-06T09:31:48.118+09:00Kristin's Korean -er- Californian LifeOn March 26, 2009, I left my life in America and moved to South Korea. I put my worldly possessions into two suitcases and a backpack and got on a plane. On December 8, 2012, I returned not to my hometown of Detroit, but to Silicon Valley, California, where I married an Indian engineer. In 2020, I divorced and moved to southern California. In this blog are my successes, failures, and observations of life in different cultures.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger116125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2896866343594338160.post-92100118155789002502022-06-05T18:30:00.008+09:002022-06-23T16:11:01.771+09:00What can I say except that chaos suits me?Every time I make concrete future plans, my life falls to pieces and I start again from scratch. Sometimes it's my fault, sometimes it's not, and often it's a combination of the two. If you've read from the beginning, you were there for the first to disintegrations of my adult life. I'll give a brief rundown and move onto the third. Like Edith Pilaf, I regret nothing.<div><span><a name='more'></a></span>
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<b>Coming of Age with a Bang</b> </div><div>In 5th grade, I won a prize for an essay about how I was going to be a veterinarian when I grew up. Over the years, this ambition shifted, but I always wanted to be a biologist or doctor of some kind. In 2006, I graduated high school having taken every biology course available and happily started pre-medical school at Michigan State University. </div><div><br /></div><div>In the fall of 2008, I cracked. My favorite grandmother had passed away over the summer, I was working too much, my coursework was burying me alive, and I had friends but felt deeply alone. Something had to give, and I abandoned my lifelong goal. I was already working on my third foreign language, so I changed my major to International Studies, which is basically anthropology and sociology. This was easier for me, but I was still falling apart at the seams. </div><div><br /></div><div>Something new had taken hold of my very being and was there to stay. It was like a swirling ball of primal, desperate rage and frustration embedded both at the back of my brain and behind my ribcage. I now call it emotional tinnitus or the silent scream. I sought help but accidentally fooled the guidance counselor into calling me extremely well-balanced. This is quite common with bipolar patients and one of the reasons most people, like me, go years without a proper diagnosis. </div><div><br /></div><div>Not knowing what I wanted to do but feeling like I might die if I kept going the way I was going, I chose to run away to the most distracting place I could think of: an opposite culture. At the time, I was fluent in French, functional in Japanese, and had one semester of Korean under my belt. I chose Korea for the food and the people, and stayed nearly 4 years. </div><div><br /></div><div>If you want details about how I managed to emigrate and also finish my degree on time (a Bachelor of Science in a Liberal Arts subject thanks to the aborted pre-med), feel free to read this blog's early posts. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>A Sinking </b><b>Lifeboat</b> </div><div>I found it much easier to update this blog regularly than to explain the same things to different people back home, so March 2009 to December 2012 are very well documented here. It was all going well. At my most stable, I was 23, married to a Korean man, and working at Samsung world headquarters with my eye on a future in marketing. </div><div><br /></div><div>But that marriage turned sour and ended badly. I stayed technically married for half a year after leaving my ex so that I could keep the visa and therefore my job while figuring out a work visa. I ultimately failed to do so, and at the end of January 2012, I lost my marriage, visa, and job all at once.
I was back to taking trips to Japan every three months to reset the clock on my 90-day travel visa. I managed to get another job in April at a pharmaceutical company, and they applied for a marketing visa for me. </div><div><br /></div><div>It was around this time that I realized with my psychology minor knowledge that I was a textbook bipolar case, and I started treatment. If you're counting, that was 4 or 5 years from onset to diagnosis, which is pretty average. </div><div><br /></div><div>Anyway, I loved this pharmaceutical company job and started making long term plans in my mind.
And then the visa application was rejected. That was it. The only way to stay in the country was to teach English to children, but I've always hated teaching children. I'm good at it, but I hate it. </div><div><br /></div><div>So I came back to the United States with my tail between my legs and practically no money because I'd blown it all during my hypomanic half a year and subsequent two months of unemployment in 2011-2012. I moved in with my brother in Silicon Valley and started applying for jobs. Hundreds of them. Silicon Valley wanted nothing to do with me, and I was barely scraping by with family help when I met my second husband in July 2013. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Everything Dies, Even Dogs and Marriages</b> </div><div>This is about the point where I more or less let this blog start gathering dust. I moved in with Mr. Engineer a month after we met for two reasons: we had seen each other every day since we met anyway, and my mom was cutting me off after generously paying my rent for half a year. </div><div><br /></div><div>I'd like to take a moment to say how grateful I am that I have a safety net, because I could easily have been dead by now without my family. And not just on that occasion. My mother even bought my plane ticket to Korea in 2009 because while she didn't like it, she understood. I probably would have killed myself if I'd stayed in Michigan. Wow. I've never actually put that into words. I wonder if that's what she meant. If you don't have a safety net but sorely need one, please open a new tab and look up organizations and programs that can help you. The internet is a beautiful place for all its ugliness. </div><div><br /></div><div>I was with Mr. Engineer for 6 1/2 years total. I loved him for a few years, tried to love him for a couple more, then waited for the scales to dip just enough to be sure it was worth it to leave for the last year. I thought I was going to have to start from scratch again. Silicon Valley killed my career. I tried a lot of different things, which makes for an interesting but useless resume, but the best I could do was a part time job running an after school math center. Again, I hate teaching kids. </div><div><br /></div><div>In November 2019, I signed up for the New Zealand Immigration email newsletter. I had done my research and decided that was my best bet. I hadn't even decided to file for divorce yet, but I was planning for it.
Mr. Engineer and I had three retired racing greyhounds around whom my world revolved. Greyhounds are excellent pets and usually live 8-12 years. I highly recommend looking up rescues near you. </div><div><br /></div><div>Falcon, our first and youngest, was an aggressively affectionate diva. Clara was the middle child and highly anxious. Pierre, the third and oldest, was an easygoing doof. Around Halloween 2019, Pierre got bone cancer, and we scheduled his in-home euthanasia for the third week of November. He was more my ex's dog than mine, but watching him die was heartbreaking. He had just turned 7. </div><div><br /></div><div> I still had my girls anchoring me to Mr. Engineer, but the problems in our marriage were becoming frightening. Falcon had been struggling with Cushing's disease for a year when she started acting extra sick. I took her to the vet on Valentine's Day 2020, where they told us she would die on her own within a week. So we had her put to sleep in our laps at the vet's office that day. She was 5. </div><div><br /></div><div>Now I'd held two of my babies for their last breaths just months apart, and the only one left was so anxious without siblings that we had to get her a new sibling or get her a new home. There was no way I was making that kind of new commitment to Mr. Engineer, so as I kissed Falcon's head for the last time, I knew I was losing both girls. </div><div><br /></div><div>A couple of weeks before Falcon passed, I had told Mr. Engineer that I wanted to leave even though it meant leaving Falcon and Clara. He'd begged me for one last chance, and I agreed to give him until the end of March to change my mind. Falcon's passing shattered me but made the decision infinitely easier. I'd rather be lost again than stay with him. I reluctantly gave him until the end of March before hiring a lawyer. I filed for divorce in April 2020. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>False Starts</b> </div><div>While I was giving Mr. Engineer his futile last chance, New Zealand locked down on my birthday, March 25th. As we sold the house and gave Clara to her new family, the rest of the world locked down. I kept thinking I'd be able to follow through with my plan as soon as New Zealand opened up again. I even made a New Zealand style CV and learned some slang. </div><div><br /></div><div>I moved in with my brother again, this time in the desert east of Los Angeles, thinking it would be just until the world opened up. We all know how that turned out.
Luckily for me, California is a community property state, which means that half of the house sale, savings, and Mr. Engineer's stocks went to me in the divorce. I waited for the world in the desert for a year, living off savings, before going a bit crazy from the weather. </div><div><br /></div><div>I applied to the Icelandic Film School after going to see the active volcano in Spring 2021, but they were not communicating well, so I gave up and moved to Los Angeles in September 2021.
I did some remote editing for a blogger and some biotech patents, but other than that I haven't done any substantial paid work yet. </div><div><br /></div><div>I'm exploring art or the film industry as a career and avoiding education at all costs. I've been trying to get out of teaching since I started in 2006, but I always fall back to it because that's what my resume says I can do. I'm applying to a variety of real jobs, finding my voice in art, doing stand up comedy for fun sometimes, and making friends. As I write this, my two brand new retired racing greyhounds are napping nearby. Jeannie (I Dream of Jean Greyhound the Dark Phoenix) and Leia (Cirque du Solieia Organa) are both lovey dovey little tiger striped princesses. </div><div><br /></div><div>But wait, you say, this heading says false starts, plural. Yes, friends. Oh yes. I'm living in a one bedroom apartment that I moved into in January 2022, but I got to LA in September 2021. It all started with Clubhouse, a social media app that's like Twitter but with voices. I got to know a girl who was in LA and looking for a new place with a new roommate. I had just decided to move to LA because <i>clearly</i> I wasn't getting out of the country again anytime soon. So we moved in together. </div><div><br /></div><div>I have since learned it's common knowledge here that LA roommates are almost all unfathomably terrible, and anybody sane lives alone. I wish I'd known this before signing a lease with Lauren. Lauren was on the verge of success but in a bad place. She was a district manager with Arbonne, a skincare and supplements company, and was sure she'd be making bank by November. If she wasn't, she promised to bartend like she used to. And if she couldn't pay rent by the end of December, she'd kick herself out. I'm writing this in a way that makes it obvious to you, the reader, that she was a manipulative liar and a con artist. </div><div><br /></div><div>There may or may not be a class action lawsuit building against her. I honestly don't know because the lawyer who reached out to me got a bunch of information and then went silent. I am still on the lease for that apartment for which Lauren hasn't paid rent in months, but if I think about it too much, I get physically ill. Which is why you're not getting any more details. Maybe I'll write about it later when reliving the psychological abuse doesn't put me into a two week depression. </div><div><br /></div><div>But Kristin, aren't you a highly intelligent human being who has interacted closely with people from all over the world and many walks of life? How did you get pulled in by a con artist? Thanks for the compliment, astute reader, and good question. I operate with an innocent until proven guilty mindset. I trust everyone and believe we are all worthy of care and multiple chances. Remember what I wrote earlier about being lucky to have a safety net? I volunteered to be Lauren's safety net to pay it forward. </div><div><br /></div><div>My dumb ass did it again in this new apartment with a young struggling actor when I realized that after three days at my place he was making no attempt to go home. I tried to help him get back on his feet, but he squandered the opportunity, and I kicked him out after a month or two. I am a prime target for the con artists of Los Angeles, and I need to toughen up. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Final Thoughts</b> </div><div>So here I am, yet again, in a new and surprisingly foreign city unlike anywhere I've lived before. No plan, no job, no idea of the strange dangers lurking in plain sight. I'm 34 years old now and trying something completely new. Too old for an internship, too inexperienced in the field for any of the jobs I'm applying to to take me seriously. I'm already failing at a couple of volunteer commitments I made that stress me out, and I've been ready to take the final step toward selling my art for like a month now but can't make myself do it. </div><div><br /></div><div>I'm off to an excellent start here in Los Angeles, obviously. Maybe I'll keep writing.
If you've actually read this far, you might be interested in supporting my insanity by buying a t-shirt or mug with my art on it <a href="https://www.redbubble.com/people/kristinlane/shop">here</a>. It's likely that all the comments will be weird spam, but, as always, I will read them. Over the years, people have expressed to me through comments in many ways that they believe in me, and it's meant a lot. I believe in you, too.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0Los Angeles, CA, USA34.0522342 -118.24368495.7420003638211554 -153.3999349 62.362468036178846 -83.0874349tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2896866343594338160.post-19590438394266807432016-05-23T17:30:00.004+09:002016-05-23T17:30:49.946+09:00Intransigent Transience in CaliforniaI've recently begun the process of opening a home bakery. I've been baking my whole life, and recently quite a few people have asked me to bake for their occasions. I filled two paid orders, and the state of California requires that I do all the paperwork to fulfill a third. The environmental health department requires labels for every product I'll sell, but it's a fully custom bakery so I don't know what I will sell. That means I have to cover all the bases, and that's a mind-boggling number of permutations.<br />
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Californians are the first to jump on "health" food trends: juice cleanses <i>(do more harm than good)</i>, superfoods <i>(not really that super)</i>, organic <i>(misnomer and misguided)</i>, etc. The ones that affect my bakery are gluten-free <i>(very few people actually have gluten sensitivity)</i>, milk-free <i>(legit; sources vary but ~75% of the world population and 25% of the US population lose the ability to digest lactose after weaning)</i>, and egg-free <i>(religious, moral, or sometimes health-related)</i>. This is making my life very difficult at the moment.<br />
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I'm proficient at starting things, but don't have an impressive track record for finishing them. I want to do this more than I've wanted to do something in a long time. I'm still struggling with my foray into real estate sales, as I'm anything but a natural salesperson, and I have little passion for it. But baking- baking has been my hobby as long as I can remember. I dismissed a career in baking because of the early morning hours, but a custom business can be on my schedule. I can integrate the bakery with my real estate venture by marketing them together, but first I must finish what I started.<br />
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I must succeed in real estate because I failed at everything else. I must finish the endless recipe permutations because I can't complete any more orders if I don't. I must finish what I started.<br />
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Oddly, the tendency to fizzle out halfway through an effort is quite common in California. Many startups here in Silicon Valley take a leap of faith and then panic at the last moment. Friendships dissipate as splendidly as they are forged. Plans are blown off, promises forgotten, goals left to fly away on the ocean breeze or obscure the road ahead like the fog rolling over the mountains. Transience is intransigent.<br />
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Maybe it's because of the weed. Maybe it's because people come here to follow their dreams and leave when faced with exorbitant housing prices and extreme competition. Many come to Silicon Valley from overseas with the intention of building up experience and savings accounts and going back home. They build lives here knowing they will let it all go, keeping this world at arm's length lest they get sucked in.<br />
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Whatever the reason, I fit in quite well here, which is not always a good thing. Being bipolar, I need an immense amount of willpower and self-control to hold onto things. Endeavors, friendships, skills, health, family, my marriage, my sanity. Fitting in makes it easier for me to dive head-first into these, and also to float away from them. I want these things. I need them. I cannot function without them. I must not fail. I must not let myself be completely Californian.<br />
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Being Californian isn't all bad. I don't care about vegan, gluten-free, organic superfoods. But I have always cared about the environment. The infrastructure for electric cars is excellent, and I love my Nissan Leaf. Many business are paperless and use recycled materials wherever possible. I've also always cared about equality, and California is one of the most inclusive places in the US, possibly the world. There's a refreshing attitude of "we don't care what you do as long as it doesn't cause harm".<br />
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Maybe that's why many people here don't finish what they start. Nobody judges us for giving up. Our best is good enough, even if we may have it in us to do better than our best.<br />
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I'm trying to do better than my best. It's always impressive when people overcome obstacles and become successful. I want to be in that category.<br />
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The problem is, success for me is like climbing a mountain. The higher I go, the harder it is to breathe. I need to take it step by step, and I need help.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2896866343594338160.post-78513564454215970902016-03-22T17:16:00.000+09:002016-03-22T17:16:08.935+09:00America's Fracturing Political Parties and Terrifying ElectionI'm a real estate agent in Silicon Valley now, and as such, I have to keep politics off my Facebook page to avoid offending anyone. Because this blog isn't the first thing I want popping up when people Google me, I've distanced my actual online presence from this. Therefore, I can talk about politics here.<br />
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First of all, I'd like to take a moment to apologize to the rest of the world for Donald Trump. I'm so sorry. He really doesn't represent the American people; at least, not all of us. Obviously, he's doing surprisingly well, so he does represent a large number of people. That scares the hell out of me. My firm opinion in this election is best summed up by a picture of a campaign sign that says, "IDK Just Not Trump".<br />
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American politics have long been on a relatively stable cycle in which a Democrat (liberal) President is voted in when Congress is already a Democrat majority. Then, by the time Congressional elections come around, the population is frustrated with Democrats and votes in Republicans (conservative). Now, the President is a Democrat and Congress has a Republican majority, and there is a decent amount of balance. The people, still wary of Democrats, vote in a Republican President, and the same thing happens. Both the Executive and Legislative branches are Republican, which annoys the public, and Congress gets a Democrat majority at the next midterm election. It's not a perfect system, but no form of known government is, and this has worked well enough for the US for years and years because when it was all said and done, the policies of both parties were extremely similar and it didn't really matter who was in office all that much. The differences were mostly in the press, especially when it came to social issues.<br />
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This election cycle, we have both parties coming apart at the seams. The American people have realized that our government is an oligarchy, and regardless of party, everyone is upset about it except the ones with the money buying all the politicians.<br />
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On the Democrat side, Hillary Clinton has had her eye on the White House forever and has been working toward it so long that she knows how to play the political games. She is exactly the candidate we have had for years and years, but her timing is terrible. She could not have succeeded years ago because she's a woman and we are still discriminated against. Now, she could succeed since the first President who is not a white male has been voted in, but the people don't want a product of the oligarchy. She had trouble before because Obama was a good candidate for the party and for the zeitgeist. Bernie Sanders appeals to the Democrats fed up with the oligarchy in that he is a "grassroots candidate". His platform is that he's one of us and he fights for us with our money, not corporations, so he serves us instead of the super rich and the corporations. It is still yet to be seen who the better candidate is, but at the moment I'm leaning towards Bernie. I'm a well-traveled, agnostic, middle class, white woman in the 25-35 age group in a mixed-race marriage with a bachelor's degree and no children (yet). I think it's fair to say I accurately represent my small demographic.<br />
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On the Republican side, the only candidate remaining who could have ever gotten the nomination in the past is John Kasich. But, because of years of Fox "News" and short-sighted Republican politicians warping the Republican party base into a racist, xenophobic, Jesus-is-on-our-side, homophobic, women's rights-hating group of mindless, angry zombies through fear-mongering, the two frontrunners are a horrible person and someone even more horrible than the other guy. Donald Trump's candidacy was seen as a joke at first, but is now utterly terrifying, and the only guy close to catching him is someone everyone who has ever met him hates, Ted Cruz. Neither of these men could have ever been seriously considered for the Presidency, so what happened? Donald Trump, like Bernie Sanders, is using the platform that he's not an oligarchy politician. He's "self -funded" (he's not) and he doesn't do what anyone tells him to (even himself). The more the Republican party turns on him, the more his followers believe in him. Their "betrayal" is proof to them that he's not like all the politicians they're fed up with (he's actually much, much worse). While whittling the Republican field down from a dozen, all the other candidates were vying for the sane vote and Trump crushed them in the polls. If the sane vote is divided 11 ways and the insane vote is concentrated in one candidate, 30% becomes a huge lead. One by one the other candidates dropped out, although most of them were also horrible choices (Ben Carson, Chris Christie, Marco Rubio, and ???). In the meantime, Trump gained momentum as the press gave him all the attention and people jumped on the bandwagon. In order to attract attention, other candidates started doing what Trump does: say mean, ridiculous things. Ted Cruz caught on quickly and offered himself as a less crazy Trump, which has worked for him. Kasich is trying to hang in there as the legitimate party's last hope. The Republican party is already plotting to hijack the nomination with a technicality if Trump actually gets it, which is seeming more and more likely. Although Trump is not a good businessman (he's rich, yes, but he actually lost quite a bit of his inheritance from his rich father and doesn't own nearly as many things as he says he does), he did pick the perfect time to run for President. The Republican party has been splitting and imploding slowly, and Trump is the earthquake finally separating the land mass that once was a solid political party.<br />
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No matter what happens, this election is one for the history books, and not in a good way. It will change the face of our politics because we have looked in the mirror and hated our reflection. The world already mocked us and/or hated us, but now Trump's embarrassing success proves our critics right. I am part of a new American generation which is more in touch with the rest of the world thanks to technology making travel and internet access part of normal life, but fewer than half of us have taken advantage of this and broadened our worldview. Recent polls show an increasing number of young people think of themselves as global citizens more strongly than American citizens, and don't think America is the greatest country in the world. Perhaps Trump's success is in part a backlash against us, and Bernie's success is a reflection of our numbers reaching a significant voting mass (he's a Democratic Socialist, and Socialism tends to be negatively received in America because of its association with communism and our anti-communist history). I'm biased, of course, but I really do hope that the future of America and the world is one that includes a greater sense of global responsibility and interconnectedness. And I hope we don't have to endure the horrors of a Trump Presidency to get to that point.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2896866343594338160.post-6017035498097075652015-03-21T08:09:00.000+09:002015-03-21T08:09:51.814+09:00Toastmasters Contest Speech: "Chasing Failure"<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px;">
Recently, I won my club speech contest and competed at the Area contest level, which is a first for me. Another first for me was that I managed to make this speech without using notes. Although I didn't win the Area contest, I did get a lot of compliments and gained confidence to continue entering contests. Here is the speech I made for the annual International Speech Contest:</div>
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<b>Chasing Failure</b></div>
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I grew up in Michigan. At 21 I chased my future to South Korea, where I spent 4 years before retreating to California, where I met the man I recently married in India.</div>
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In Michigan, I was the smartest person I knew according to my huge ego. I had good grades, a bright future, and close friends. Then one day I didn’t have those anymore, so I ran away to South Korea and vowed never to return.</div>
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After 9 months of failing to find a full-time job, I returned to Michigan to finish my degree. The day after graduation, I flew back to the scene of my most recent failure to try again.</div>
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This time, I lucked into a corporate job and made plans for my impressive future. But then my visa expired and I couldn’t get a new one, so I fled to California. </div>
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In California, I couldn’t even get a job as a secretary. I obsessed about how I’d failed by choosing an International Studies major, failed in my career in Korea, failed to get a job in my own country, failed to build a life for myself, failed failed failed.</div>
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While I was feeling sorry for myself, my damaged <b>family</b> relationships were healing, and I met my husband. I was slowly becoming happy for the first time in my life. I live in a beautiful area with all the comforts of home but people and culture from all over the world. The sun is almost always shining and there are no mosquitoes.</div>
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My problem was that my standard of success did not fit my life. My happiness was dependent on my corporate success, and I had pushed everyone away. Even if it had worked out I would never have been happy. I had to fail to realize that was not the life I wanted. </div>
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And if that’s not the life I want, that life's standard of success is not success. When I chose my major, when I ran away to Korea, when I came to California, I was trying to find happiness. So success is merely to be happy. Now I’m happy and so are the people I care about.</div>
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Once I shifted my perception of myself from a failure to a success, my memories gained a different color. The time I thought I’d wasted in Korea was actually spent learning how to be a foreigner, something Americans are notoriously bad at.</div>
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When I first got to Korea, I asked a lot of questions about the way things are, like “Why is there a cartoon cat with a fish on its head saying ‘I love rainbow’ on that toilet paper holder?” It took me years to accept the answer that Koreans just like cute things. </div>
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In India, there are bright colors everywhere, including intricately painted cargo trucks. I asked my husband why the trucks are so colorful. His answer that Indians like color was good enough for me, because I’ve learned to accept things the way they are.</div>
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As a cute foreigner in Korea, I was stared at for 4 years straight, so I barely even noticed eyes on me in India. After being terrified by Koreans ignoring traffic rules, I avoided a nervous breakdown in Indian anarchist traffic. After mastering the squatting toilet in Korea, I managed not to hurt myself in an Indian public restroom. </div>
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Now I’m used to people talking about me in a language I don't understand, so I just go off somewhere in my head and wait to be directly spoken to. I learned a lot of new customs in India, but the act of learning was familiar so I wasn’t overwhelmed. I’ve succeeded in having confidence in unfamiliar situations.</div>
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I have redefined failure as experience I didn’t plan for but will be useful later. Instead of always chasing something better, I’m content with the way my life has turned out so far. I’m happy. And that is what I call success.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2896866343594338160.post-30518474616693260982015-01-17T17:57:00.000+09:002015-01-17T17:57:28.636+09:00Happy EndingI am not an ESL teacher this year. I quit my last ESL teaching job (hopefully) ever in December. This year, I am starting by getting married. As you have come to expect from me, my wedding will not be a normal one. The ceremony itself will be in my fiance's hometown in India at the end of this month. We leave from the San Francisco Airport next Friday. After we get back, we will have a reception here in California for friends and family who can't or won't make the trip to India. After the reception, I am going into real estate. There is a man in my Toastmasters club who is a real estate broker, and he is excited to get me set up with his firm. I just need to take three classes and a test. Unless I'm the worst real estate agent ever, I will never have to teach English again!<br />
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If you've been reading my blog just recently and feel that this is a huge and very fast life change, take a look at the dates on my previous posts. I only posted once last year. The reason for this is that my life is not interesting anymore. I'm back in my home country, so there aren't many cultural differences to blog about. I'm not one to put the mundane details of my life like grocery shopping and failed parties and getting fat and content with my boyfriend on the internet for people whose lives are no different to read. The original purpose of this blog was to let my family and friends know how I was doing and why I ran away in the first place so that they wouldn't each email or Facebook message me individually with the dreaded three words: "How are you?" or the other three words: "How is Korea?" As I kept blogging, I realized I had fans all over the world. Not tons of them, but more than I ever expected. So I tried to make it more interesting.<br />
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Since I got back, my life has not been interesting. I have failed to get a job in marketing, which was the field I was trying so hard to enter in Korea. I have failed to get a job as a secretary, administrative assistant, HR assistant, or recruiter. I interviewed at the same nonprofit for a secretary job, a case worker job, and as a volunteer salsa dancing instructor, but was hired as a part-time ESL teacher. If you learn anything from my silent period post-Korea, it's that you shouldn't go overseas and expect the professional experience you get there to mean anything.<br />
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It's really quite awful in some ways. I made it harder on myself socially by moving to California instead of Michigan, because almost my whole life before Korea was in Michigan. On the other hand, there are very few people back there I'd actually like to hang out with, and the ones I didn't want to see but who wanted to see me would be problematic. So I guess a clean slate is good in that way. Nobody knew me here. Without a job and without going back to school, I didn't have any real opportunities to meet anyone, either. So now, after more that two years, I still have very few friends. I've always been a bit bad at making and keeping friends in the first place, and it's much harder now that I have no reason to get out of the house.<br />
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But the clean slate is nice. I changed so much in the last 6 years that people who knew me before I ran away to Korea don't really know me now. That's to be expected, right? These days I think about my life in Korea less and less, but when I do look back on it I can't believe that was really me. Was I so brave? Was I so insane? Was I so outgoing? Was I so lonely? Was I so desperate to be someone? I feel like I lived an entire lifetime in those four years. Now that I can see what a mess I made of everything, I can start over and get it right this time. And I wasn't just making a mess of everything in Korea; I was making a mess of everything long before that, and I ran away to forge a completely different path because there was no more track in the direction I was going. I would have been a train derailed in the snow. Instead, I had a good ride and derailed in the concrete of Seoul. <br />
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I have no regrets. The choices I made were terrible in terms of building a viable career. But every step I took led me to where I am now, and I wouldn't have it any other way. I'm not happy every day, singing with birds and summoning rainbows. But for the first time in my life, I don't have the constant feeling in the pit of my stomach that I need professional help. I don't. I did when I was confused and stressed and lonely and scared and ashamed of myself. But I'm not those things anymore. I'm still moody, but not clinically moody. I'm still a bit of an insomniac, but I don't start projects at 3am. I'm still unsure of my professional future, but I'm not scared of it anymore. I'm still a bit lonely because I don't have enough friends, but I have my mother and brother in the area and a great fiance. And I'm still ashamed of some things I've done, but not of who I am.<br />
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For anyone who is thinking of selling everything and going to live in a country you've never even visited before, think of the impact it will have on the people in your life. If nobody depends on you and you have a safety net in case you crash and burn like I did, go for it. It will be hard, and if and when you ever return it will be even harder, but if you're looking to run away do it now before anyone depends on you. If you have children or sick family members, wait. Running away was the most selfish thing I've ever done, and I hurt my parents a lot. The experience has caused me to grow up so much that I have been working to be a better daughter. I think my relationship with my parents now is the best it's ever been. If you're desperate to go somewhere else, make sure everyone knows it's to find yourself, not to get away from them. You might not think you need those bridges you're burning, but you probably will.<br />
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Like I said, my life is not interesting anymore. I like it that way. The extreme highs and lows of life in Korea kept me on edge and I went crazy. Here in California, the weather is consistent. My mother's presence is consistent. My brother's presence is as consistent as he gets. My fiance's love for me is consistent. Surprisingly, my love for him is consistent. My Toastmasters club is consistent. These things keep me grounded. But there is so much variety here that I don't get bored. It's a perfect balance. I had to be dangerously unbalanced to finally appreciate the value of balance.<br />
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This could be my last post. Probably not, but maybe. I always posted when I was antsy, depressed, bored and lonely, desperate for the approval of strangers on the internet, etc. I was always alone when I posted. But I'm getting married in two weeks, and unlike my failed experiment in Korea, I understand what that means and I want it. I'm not going to be alone and emotional in the middle of the night, when I do my best writing. You can see from this post that my writing is getting bland from lack of insanity. Consider this my happy ending. It's at least a happy beginning. See, I was always hanging on by a thread of hope that tomorrow wouldn't be as bad as today. For the first time in a long time, I'm not hanging on. I'm standing comfortably in today. And I'm not hoping tomorrow won't be as bad as today. I'm expecting it to be more or less the same, possibly even better. And that, my friends, is happiness to me.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2896866343594338160.post-44893846192811446482015-01-16T11:16:00.000+09:002015-01-16T11:16:44.711+09:00Marriage of Different Cultures<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Toastmasters CC Manual Speech
#6 Vocal Variety - December 19, 2014</span></div>
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of Different Cultures</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">In
less than two months, I will marry my Indian fiance. Many people,
including my mother, have warned me that it's more difficult to marry
someone from another culture than from your own. But every marriage
is a marriage of different cultures. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">When
you hear the word “culture”, the first thing that comes to mind
is probably a representation of “nationality”. Culture is not
just about where you're from; it's a fluid collection of influences,
constantly changing with new experiences. With emigration, global
trade, the internet, and cultural exports, people can be influenced
by other countries without leaving their hometowns. </span>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Take
me for example. I had a pretty normal childhood in a middle-class,
90% white, Christian, Midwestern suburb. I am a salsa-dancing,
Korean-speaking, Bollywood-watching, global food-cooking, agnostic
young woman. I am not simply a product of my upbringing. I am a
product of influences from around the globe which have been available
at my fingertips for much of my life. And my generation is like this
all over the world.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">In
that way, I am marrying someone from my own culture. My fiance was
born in India two and a half years before I was born, and he, too,
had a middle-class upbringing. He has two older brothers, and I have
one. He liked some of the same shows and music I did. He wanted to be
a doctor, but chose engineering instead. I got 3 semesters into
pre-medical school before changing my major. He took a trip to
Thailand while I was living in South Korea. We both love pizza,
fajitas, and Thai food, none of which are from either of our
countries.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The
most obvious cultural differences I feel are gender differences.
Everywhere in the world, there are wives nagging their husbands
because their husbands don't listen. I bore him with shopping lists
and wedding details, and he bores me with sports and war history. I
look through my closet and feel there's nothing to wear, and he wears
the same t-shirt 3 days in a row. I keep my nails clean and sometimes
painted, and he lets his become weapons. I love to relax and pamper
myself, and he's a workaholic. I really am marrying someone from a
totally different culture. Maybe I should be a lesbian instead! </span>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Every
marriage is a marriage of different cultures. Traditions are easy to
learn, blend, or build. The important thing is to respect each other
and to build a new household culture for the new family. This can be
done in little ways, like surprising your partner with comfort food
on a bad day. And in medium ways, like learning your partner's
favorite hobby so you can do it together. And in big ways, like
working hard to communicate without fighting. Most importantly, every
single person has a unique culture so sometimes it's necessary to
just let your partner be different.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">There
are going to be difficulties in our marriage that are above and
beyond what most homogeneous couples face. His parents and I don't
speak the same language, so even the simplest conversation will be
hard work. His family is Hindu, mine is Christian, and I'm agnostic,
so choosing a theology to raise our children in will be a challenge.
Even our expectations of each other differ from our expectations of
ourselves because our role models have been vastly different.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">These
types of difficulties do not scare me. They are opportunities to
enrich myself and our marriage, to forge a deeper connection rather
than be content with a shallow understanding of each other, assuming
that we are the same because we come from the same background. Every
marriage is a marriage of different cultures. We are just entering
ours knowing this and ready for the challenge.</span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2896866343594338160.post-66415606360834789072014-04-05T12:12:00.001+09:002014-04-05T12:16:21.681+09:00The Evolution of Incubus, Brandon Boyd, and MeWhen I was in high school and college, my favorite band was Incubus, hands down. I have never stopped liking them, but as life happened and I paid even less attention to media than the little I'd paid before, I just kept listening to the albums I already had. Not that it's not much. I have everything from Fungus Amongus and Enjoy Incubus to Light Grenades. Today I realized they made another album in 2011, and Brandon Boyd made a solo album. I immediately looked them up on YouTube and they are awesome. Of course they're awesome. Some bands sound the same album after album after album. For example, Maroon 5 is great, but within 10 seconds of listening to one of their songs you know it's them. The musicality is the same, even the lyrics are the same things said with different words. But Incubus (and now Brandon Boyd on his own, too... next thing to Google is his new band?) is a sound constantly in flux with an underlying personality that ties everything together. Every song resonates with my heartbeat and respiration in a different way.<br />
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<a name='more'></a>Sometimes I feel young and rebellious and crave the barely reigned funk of their early music. Sometimes I'm in love and relate to the galactic metaphors that take Frank Sinatra's "Fly Me to the Moon" to the next level. Sometimes I just like to relax and breathe deeply, purge the thoughts that plague my mind, and listen to Aqueous Transmission. As I grow and change myself, my favorite song of theirs changes as well. And, to be honest, there are a couple songs I've never liked. But with almost 20 years of music and a fan base as varied as their albums, that's inevitable. I tend to lean more towards the exotic rock than the funk metal.<br />
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I bring this up because it's a link to my past, and Incubus songs have been my comfort for years. I started listening to them because my older brother liked them and I worshipped him because I was little; but, while we both still listen to them, we favor different phases of their musical evolution. It's very representative of our lives. We started in the same place, and have now lived completely different lives since high school. Both have been tumultuous and full of learning life lessons the hard way, and we are still very strongly connected. We may not talk much but we don't need to. Just like these days I've started listening to more Latin music and artists like Adele and Lindsey Stirling, I go back and listen to Incubus every now and then and feel a deep familiarity, like I'm home.<br />
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Thinking through the years, I see the evolution of Incubus's sound corresponding with my own emotional journey over the past 10 or 15 years, although the order in my life is maybe in a little different order. Listening to the most recent album, If Not Now, When?, I feel like I'm in a place where I can appreciate it. It's like an album-length Aqueous Transmission with more and different facets. It's peaceful and content, with a bit of lingering uncertainty. To be honest, I haven't listened to the words yet. I usually hear a song at least 5 times before I pay attention to the words. So, I could be a little off base there.<br />
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I've been composing piano music before I even started piano lessons. Granted, my pre-lesson songs were probably terrible. But I liked it. I took 8 years of classical piano lessons starting when I was 10. My first real song was in the works almost as soon as I started. I eventually named it Neptune's Lullaby (sea god Neptune) for its soothing, regular tidal rhythm and sweet, calming high notes. Its simplicity gives it a certain innocence and charm. After that, all of my songs are dark. Some are sad, some are angry, some are just masterfully dark, the darkness we all do our best to keep from reaching the surface and scaring everyone away.<br />
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Now I have a piano and a lot of free time. I still teach ESL to seniors at a nonprofit two mornings a week and salsa dance almost every Wednesday night, but aside from that I don't really do anything. But I barely play. When I do, I just practice what I've already learned and written so as not to forget. When I do try to compose, it doesn't feel right. The darkness is gone and there is no mania to replace it. I don't feel bipolar anymore, and am really starting to doubt if I am actually clinical or if I'm kind of borderline and was just always under so much stress I couldn't handle my own life. I don't remember ever being content. This is completely new to me.<br />
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I still live with the boyfriend I mentioned in the last entry and I'm sure this is it for me. I am coming to terms with my shortcomings and realize that I won't get a job without any marketable skills, which I am slowly building. All I've ever done was because I was in the right place at the right time, or because I was so desperate I found a way to earn cash (not prostitution of the body, only of the mind: private tutoring). And, except for half a year in which I was manic and borderline insane, I have always been short on money and felt it. Now I need for nothing and I don't have to bend over backwards just to get it. I have stresses, but now they are normal ones, like social issues and family things. Nothing like losing my job and visa and running out of savings to the point where I couldn't stay in Korea but couldn't afford a ticket home. I haven't yet figured out how to compose music from this place.<br />
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Music used to be catharsis. Now I don't need an outlet for my darkness. I'm starting to piece together something more serene and I like it, but it doesn't flow from an innate need to create an expressive sound. I can say what I want to say now with words and actions. Piano seems... redundant. Now that I've discovered Incubus's and Brandon Boyd's newer music and felt a similar peace in it, I have some inspiration to get back at it and renew my own music to reflect this new spiritual place.<br />
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If you're wondering, no I am not trying to promote my own music. I don't even have all my songs written down, and none of them exist outside of my computer and my head. If my computer and I die, my music will die with us. If someone were to come along one day and offer to publish it, I would probably agree, but I feel no urge to be my own salesperson. I am not cut out for sales. Although, I'd probably be a pretty good salesperson for Incubus, seeing as I just wrote an entire entry on how integral their music has been and continues to be in my life.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2896866343594338160.post-69011310007467993282013-07-30T14:26:00.001+09:002013-07-30T14:26:38.170+09:00Forging New PathsIt is becoming increasingly clear that despite my fleeting ambitions otherwise, I am most likely going to end up teaching ESL for the rest of my life. It's been my safety net, my fallback plan, often my main career, for the past 6 years. I'm good at it and I enjoy bonding with students and watching them improve. That look that plays across a person's face when understanding dawns is priceless, especially when the thing being understood is useful in daily life or more complex than the person expected to be able to understand. Many ESL teachers treat their adult students like children, which often doesn't go over well. I aim to learn as much from them as they learn from me, and I show them the respect they deserve for working hard to learn another language. I could build many good relationships and be content as an ESL teacher. I guess that's all I can ask for in life.<br />
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I have started working a little at an organization called <a href="http://aaci.org/" target="_blank">AACI (Asian Americans for Community Involvement)</a>. It's a non-profit community service provider, not necessarily limited to the Asian community but mainly helping immigrant and minority communities. I have been volunteering at their senior center as an ESL teacher twice per week, and will start getting paid for it this week. I am also volunteering as an ESL tutor for a woman from Syria who doesn't know any English. She needs to know some basic English to be able to join a class, so I'm trying to get her to a functioning level. I might get another class of refugees soon. I don't know if that will be paid or not and I don't really care either way. It's very selfish of me, but I feel proud of myself when I volunteer so much of my time to help people who have nothing. I guess that makes me selfless, feeling that I'm selfish for helping people. It doesn't really matter what my motives are, though. What matters is the grateful expression I get every day when my students can speak and understand just a little bit more, or when I search around for books in Arabic and drive a mother and her three children to a library a little far away so they can check out books and DVDs in their language. The drive to be on the receiving end of that gratitude, to be able to make that kind of impact on someone's life, that is what makes me think I could do this for the rest of my life.<br />
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My experiences in Korea help me relate to the immigrant community here. I guess that goes without saying. Today, I was teaching my senior class and one of them was trying to think of the word "southern" and said it in Chinese. The word is exactly the same in Korean, so I understood and translated for her. The whole class looked shocked because they know I don't know Chinese. I laughed and explained that the word is the same in Korean, and they all laughed, too. Those little moments create a bond between diaspora, despite the fact that I'm a diaspora returned home. While tutoring my Syrian student today, I explained to her that in Korea I had trouble cooking because when I went to the grocery store I couldn't read and understand what things were. She had chosen a few cookbooks in Arabic because she loves to cook. Because of my experience in Korea, I told her to try translating a recipe from Arabic to English using a picture dictionary she checked out that has both English and Arabic. She said it was good homework. I felt useful. So far I've been teaching her things she needs in daily life, like time and dates and making plans, prices, basic family words, etc. She can ask, "Where is my son?" and "What time is it now?" She's very determined and a fast learner. She reminds me of myself in Korea.<br />
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In other news, one of my housemates and I have been thinking of moving out together for a while now, and were half-heartedly looking for places. We couldn't afford a decent 2-bedroom place in this area and were okay getting a 1-bedroom place although the idea didn't excite either of us. I met a guy on July 2nd and have seen him every day since. We started dating a couple days after we met and I haven't slept alone a night since then. I know it's fast and probably stupid, but we practically live together anyway and I don't see this ending anytime, at least not anytime soon, so the three of us are moving in together on August 1st. My boyfriend and I will take one room and my housemate will take the other in a 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom apartment. It's closer to work for all of us when compared to the house we're in now (further from my boyfriend's place, but he doesn't actually live there anymore; he just showers there and keeps his stuff there).<br />
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I feel like doors are finally opening here. They're not the doors I expected, but they are good doors nonetheless. For the past few years, I envisioned myself in a high-powered corporate role earning a more than comfortable amount of money and impressing everyone. I wanted to carry a briefcase and wear Calvin Klein and Marc Jacobs on international business trips. I wanted to be impressive. I wanted to be my mother (but she doesn't wear designer clothing, although she could afford it). I'm realizing now that all I've ever wanted to do is help people, and while I was chasing corporate success I only made myself miserable or basically tried to destroy myself being "happy". I could have all the material things in the world and still be missing a sense of accomplishment and purpose. I'd much rather worry about money a little and make a visible difference in others' lives. My mother feels that my mostly giving up on finding a "real job" is evidence of my rejecting everything she stands for and therefore showing that I don't respect her. On the contrary, I respect her immensely because she has accomplished things most people wouldn't venture to try because it's too much work or too difficult. I can't do what she's done. I'm not cut out for graduate school; I don't have the concentration or respect for authority. And it's just not what I want for myself.<br />
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In many societies, respect for one's parents and obedience to them are one and the same. Following in a parent's footsteps is seen as the proper thing to do that will be good for everyone. But I happen to believe that the best way to show respect for my parents and everyone who has had an impact on my life is to be happy. If I am happy, there is no reason for me to harbor resentment for having my dreams stifled. If I am happy, my parents need not feel guilty for holding me from what I really wanted. If I am happy, I show in my everyday life that I am thankful to my parents for creating me. If I do what they want and am miserable, will anyone really be happy with that?<br />
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It's taking me a long time to figure out, and it's a rough road. But I have confidence again that I will find my niche and I will be content, and finding that is worth the wait in my eyes.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2896866343594338160.post-38752840626920142862013-06-15T07:50:00.000+09:002013-06-15T07:50:17.469+09:00How Salsa Saved Me (and helped me ruin my life)I wasn't going to post this because I've done my best to keep this blog rated PG and keep the exploits I'm ashamed of off. But, as I was reading over it and fixing things here and there I realized how important salsa was in my life in Korea and how it's become an integral part of my life. My friend, Kiki in this story (all names are aliases), asked me to write about the impact dancing has had on my life. She said it could be any length, and as I'm very wordy, it ended up being 10 pages in MS Word. To my regular readers, some of this may be repetitive, but I guarantee there are some things I never told you. Enough of my introduction. Here is the story of how salsa saved me (and helped me ruin my life). Nothing is embellished or fictional.<br />
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">To Kiki and Rosemary:
you are more than acquaintances to go to salsa clubs with. You are the friends
who kept me going in the spaces between dances.</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In the spring of 2009, I turned 21 years old and got on a
plane to South Korea, vowing never to return to the US. I was running away, not
so much from something, although I felt I had nothing to anchor me and prevent
me from leaving, but rather I was running away to something. I was running away
to a future, a life I would build from scratch with my own hands. Why I chose
South Korea is another story in itself. I would find out a few years later that
I have “severe rapid-cycling bipolar II disorder”. This helps explain a lot.
But at that time, I was alone on a continent I’d never visited before with two
suitcases and a backpack, a very basic knowledge of the Korean language and
history, and no plan.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Fast forward to summer 2010. After having returned to the US
for a torturous 7 months to finish my university degree, I was back in Korea at
Seoul City Hall signing marriage papers with my new Korean husband whom I had
known for almost exactly one year. My future was bright and rose-colored and
made of dreams and butterflies. I knew that this was what I was running away to
when I first left the US and that my happily ever after was about to start,
despite the strange misgiving I had felt when I saw his face in the airport and
felt nothing. I was 22; he was 23. We started a small fusion burrito restaurant
in Andong, touted the most traditional city in Korea. After 3 months we
declared it a failure and I started looking for jobs in Seoul. During my 7
months in the US and the 6 months in Andong, I lost touch with everyone I had
befriended in Seoul. It was a new start again when we moved to the big city in
late November for my job at a prestigious multinational company.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It was my first real job. I became close to one of my
coworkers, a Canadian woman, Kiki, who had been at the company a few years. She
had recently taken up salsa dancing and was so enthusiastic about it that I
can’t think of a word in all the 4 languages I’ve studied to describe her
passion for salsa. She loved it even though she couldn’t discern a rhythm in
the music, saying that salsa music sounded like someone had put a bunch of
chopsticks in a can and thrown it down a flight of stairs. She incessantly
invited everyone she talked with to join her salsa class. Her goal was to have
someone to go to salsa clubs with when she got good enough. I saw a lot of her,
so naturally I heard a lot about salsa.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When I was little, my parents wanted me to try a lot of
different activities so I could find what I liked. I tried gymnastics, swimming,
soccer, ice skating, ballet, and finally later stuck with horse riding and
piano. I still play piano often and compose music for fun. I remember that my
least favorite activities were soccer- I sat in my defensive spot and plucked
grass most of the time- and ballet. My connection with music has always been
strong, but since that ballet class I disliked, I always assumed I would be a
terrible dancer and never felt an urge to try again despite the musical talent
I was lucky to be born with.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One day Kiki was pestering me to go to her salsa class
again. I finally gave in and said that I would go once if she would just shut
up about it. I talked to my husband about it and we went together. I loved it;
he liked it. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We rearranged the budget (I was the only one working so money was
tight) and we started taking salsa classes with Kiki. For the first time since
the restaurant, we had something we could do together with a goal. It
strengthened our marriage. But, like many other things (like jobs), he decided
after a couple months that it was too difficult and was causing him too much
stress and making him feel inadequate, and we quit in the spring of 2011. I was
not happy about that, but he was the jealous type and I couldn’t keep dancing
like that with other men. That was the end of my brief foray into salsa.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Just kidding! This would be a very lame story if that were
the case. But “every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.” My
love affair with salsa would only truly start after I left my husband. In July,
almost exactly a year after we married, I kicked him out of the apartment. Our
marriage had been on the rocks since shortly after we moved to Seoul. I had
seen some hope of making it last when we started learning salsa together, but
his inevitable resignation was another sign to me that he would never be capable
of following through with anything. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Ironically, it was the story of our love that did the most
to tear me away from him. He decided he wasn’t cut out to be a chef after
working in a restaurant for 3 days, which is what he had gone to college for,
and that he wanted to be a writer. I told him I’d give him one year to write a
book and if he failed he’d have to get a job and never give up again. He chose
his topic as our love story, which was actually a good idea and probably would
have been a hit in Korea. Young, brave, intelligent, white American girl runs
away to Korea and meets a young, poor Korean dreamer for a language exchange.
She barely speaks Korean, he speaks even less English. A year later they marry
and start a restaurant together. They get a cute puppy and move to the big
city. She gets a corporate job and he becomes a (famous) writer. They speak
mostly Korean at home and she loves Korea and Korea is great! That book would
have been a bestseller in Korea. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
After two months, I asked how it was coming along. He said
he’d finished the outline for the entire book and was almost done with chapter
one. Four months after that, I asked again, trusting he’d made good progress
because he was always talking about how hard he was working on it. He said he’d
started over a few times and had written the whole outline and was almost done
with chapter one. Soon after that I stopped sleeping with him. A couple weeks
after I stopped sleeping with him, I came home very drunk from a work dinner. I
don’t remember paying the taxi driver, taking the elevator to the 7<sup>th</sup>
floor, going into my apartment and removing my shoes, or making it to the
mattress/blanket thing on the floor (very Asian sleeping apparatus). I don’t
remember my husband taking off my clothes. I remember that I couldn’t move and
that I didn’t want him on top of me. I remember him having sex with my motionless
body like a necrophiliac.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I was 23 years old when I kicked my husband out of the
apartment that I paid for but was in his name. I let him keep a key so he could
come get his things while I was at work when I didn’t have to see his face. He
liked long hair so I’d been growing mine out. I immediately cut it off. I look
better with short hair. I had quit salsa for him. I started going to class with
Kiki again. She said it would be good for me, and she was right. I started to
think of myself as single and took off my wedding ring. I held my chin up and
slept alone at night. I had been so involved in my marriage that I had almost
nobody to turn to but Kiki. We ate lunch together and had coffee breaks
together even when she was transferred to another building about a block away.
We watched YouTube videos of salsa dancers and dreamed of the day we’d look
like that on the dance floor.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A couple weeks after I cut my hair I came home from work and
took off my shoes in the doorway as usual. I switched on the light and right in
front of me was my husband. “Hello, honey,” he said. “Your hair looks nice.” I
contemplated running but walked in instead. On the table was a “romantic” meal
of a $5 pizza and a bottle of Pepsi, and a bouquet of flowers. This from the
chef I married. I asked him what he was doing in my home. He said it was in his
name so it was his home. His father had kicked him out, ashamed that his
marriage had failed, and he hadn’t told his mother because he thought he could
win me back. He proposed that we be roommates. He said he wouldn’t touch me if
I didn’t want him to. He was cold and calculating. He was a boy in the body of
a man with nothing to lose. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I kept calm and called Kiki. I packed a carry-on sized
suitcase with essentials and went to the subway station. An hour later, near
midnight, I knocked on Kiki’s door. She told her husband and kids that the
power and gas had gone out at my apartment and I needed a place to stay while
it was fixed. I took my suitcase with me to the office the next day and spent
the greater part of an hour trying to find a place to leave it, finally putting
it in a subway station locker. I asked a coworker I trusted to look up cheap
residency hotels in the area, but the only thing I could afford was a goshiwon.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A goshiwon is a living arrangement born out of limited
available space, a large class divide, and grueling study habits necessary to
pass tests designed for fierce competition. Just before I started middle
school, my parents got divorced and my mom moved into a condo which had a
surprisingly large walk-in closet in my bedroom. We always joked that a person
could live in that closet. Whoever invented the goshiwon must have had the same
epiphany and was very economically minded. When I first moved to Korea I spent
6 months in 2 different goshiwon, and I promised myself that would not happen
again. I try not to make promises anymore.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
On the bright side, this particular goshiwon had a private
bathroom just large enough to stand up in, and the window actually opened to
the outside instead of to a hallway. And, as it was near a university (also
only 2 subway stops from the office), most of the tenants were near my age
instead of creepy old divorcees and widows. I spent about $500 per month on
this closet with a bathroom and internet access, and I was also paying the $500
or so rent on my old apartment that my husband had decided not to live in
anyway because it reminded him of me. In retrospect I should not have done that
but I wasn’t thinking clearly at the time. I think I can be forgiven given the
circumstances.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Needless to say, I did everything I could to spend as little
time as possible in my goshiwon room. By this time, Kiki and I were confident
enough in our dancing to go to the ‘beginner’ salsa club, Top. I can honestly
say I never slept with anyone I met at Top. I did, however, become quite
popular and unofficially join a social club with Top regulars. This was most
likely because 1. I was the youngest person to frequent the club, 2. I’m
American, and 3. by that time my Korean was pretty fluent.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I drank with coworkers at least once a week and danced salsa
once a week at first. I went on a date with a guy from Craigslist who offered
to take me on a helicopter ride to Jeju Island and then never called me again.
I flirted with a geek at work I had a crush on, but he would have none of it. I
was lonely and desperate and I clung more and more to salsa as I got better and
better.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I was hemorrhaging money on two abodes, student loan
payments and credit card debts which were largely thanks to my husband, and my
new lifestyle that kept me away from home for as many of my waking hours as I
could manage. I needed more income, so I hatched a plan. I bought a digital
piano for $1500 and put it in a room in my salsa teacher’s studio. We agreed
that I’d pay $10 per hour to rent the room to teach piano in English to
Koreans, for which I’d make $50 per half hour. He would advertise for me. He even
lined up my first student. I must have touched that piano three times and never
taught a single lesson. About a year later, I sent it to my boyfriend’s little
sister in Busan on the other side of the country.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I found a room in a luxury apartment on the 19<sup>th</sup>
floor of a new high rise on the northeast side of Seoul. I paid the married
couple who lived in the master bedroom $1000 per month plus utilities to live
there. We all got along great, although I wasn’t home much, and when I was I
was asleep. By this time I was dancing at least three nights a week at
different salsa clubs and going out with coworkers another one or two nights a
week. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One night I went with Kiki to a salsa club I’d never been to
before in Hongdae, a party district of Seoul. Our salsa teacher met us there.
They were playing a lot of bachata, the sexiest of the salsa-related dances.
It’s basically dry humping vertically with style. Two guys kept asking me to
dance and buying me drinks. One was relatively tall and rotund, the other quite
short and scrawny. I thought them an odd duo, obviously good friends. I
tolerated the fat one because I liked dancing with the short one. He was smooth
and had rhythm. I left the club with them, assuring my teacher I was fine. The
three of us ended up in a hotel. The owner wouldn’t let us all stay in one
room, so they paid for two. We all went to one room. It wasn’t how I imagined
my first threesome (and only to date) would be, but I was free of my husband
and on a rampage, so why the hell not? Before marriage, I’d never had a one
night stand or a threesome, and I’d always wondered what I’d missed.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The big one was not big all over. The little one sat in a
chair and watched as the big one struggled with the condom I insisted he use.
He couldn’t get it up, and frustrated, he eventually stormed out of the room
and I never saw him again. The little one smiled and walked to the bed. He had
nothing to brag about physically, but salsa dancing had done him a lot of
favors in strengthening his legs and teaching him how to move his hips. We saw
each other once or twice outside of salsa clubs after that, but I didn’t want
to sleep with him again. I felt…. dirty. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Kiki and I would come to call the little one Elvis because
his hairstyle was very similar, and he danced a bit like Elvis. He wore really
tight pants with crazy patterns: animal prints, polka dots, plaid, stripes of
primary colors. And he stole attention when he danced. When others wiggled
their hips, he shook them like an earthquake was centered below his feet. When
others did meek, robotic body rolls, he thrust every part of his body forward
in smooth succession like he was made of rubber. When others reached for the
sky, he poked God’s eye out with his jazz hands. Some days he ignored me and
some days he treated me like his best friend. He never got to know Kiki well
because they never slept together and he couldn’t speak English.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One day he texted me that he wanted to set me up on a blind
date with his friend. I told him I was wary of blind dates and not really into
it. He said his friend was tall, handsome, and the owner of an English academy
(which usually, but not always, means a person can speak English well and has a
lot of money). After much protest, I agreed. Oops.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I met my date at Gangnam station in sight of my office
building. He led me to a street I’d never walked down before. It was lined with
love motels (the kind where you can pay by the hour and there are condoms in
every room) and dead ended onto a street crammed with bars and restaurants
where people only ordered food to wash down the soju. We went into one such
restaurant, which smelled of frying, greasy meat and alcohol and sounded like
drunkenness. The sun had yet to set. I had realized by this point that my date
was neither tall nor handsome, and his English was worse than my Korean so I
had reverted to speaking Korean with him. I now assumed he was not rich either.
I hoped his personality would be redeeming. Silly me. After a horrible dinner
of the cheapest food and drink on the menu, we walked back toward the subway
station. He stopped me in the middle of the street and asked if I’d like to join
him in one of the many love motels. I informed him I was not a slut and went
home, angrily texting Elvis.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I suppose I can’t blame him for basically telling his friend
he could have easy sex with a white girl. After all, remember how we met?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Kiki and I started going to the club where the good dancers
went, Turn. Not many people asked us to dance because we weren’t in the social
group and we weren’t as good at dancing, but we got a few dances here and there
and we felt classy just by being there. Plus, the DJ was adorable. He was very
short, rather stocky, and always wore a flamboyantly colored button-up shirt
with a suit vest and a fedora. He was very enthusiastic about the music and
stepped down from his booth every now and then to dance. He was an excellent
dancer.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One guy showed a lot of interest in me, and I thought he was
pretty cute. The lighting in salsa clubs is very flattering. Dim and red.
Erases wrinkles, pockmarks, and other signs of age and imperfection. We talked
and hit it off, and I gave him my number. A few days later he came over. We
walked in the garden on the 6<sup>th</sup> floor of my building and he kissed
me in the moonlight. We went back upstairs and talked awhile in the living room
with the husband and his female friend. They went to the master bedroom and
closed the door, which he said later was to give us some privacy. He said this
later in his defense as his marriage was ending because the wife found out
about his three girlfriends. The salsa guy (I have no idea what his name was)
and I went to my room and had empty sex. I still had yet to see him in bright
light, as it was night when he came over and we kept the living room lights dim
so we could always see the beautiful night view of the city below. Then I
really saw his face for the first time. He must have been near 40. He went
home. I never slept with him again. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I was also kind of seeing another guy I met in a different
salsa club. He was cute and kind and a good dancer, and he was 29 years old (6
years my senior). He flirted with me a lot and treated me like his girlfriend,
holding my hand in public and texting me often. But he never kissed me. After
about a month of this, I finally asked why. It went downhill from there. We’re
still Facebook friends but I can’t remember the last time I talked to him. It’s
probably for the best. The guy lived mostly on milk, eggs, and chicken breast,
and worked out like it was his job. I don’t remember what his job was, but it
wasn’t a good one. After having supported a man for 2 years, I refuse to date a
guy without a good job.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There was also Carls (not Carlos), who owned one of the
salsa clubs and the chicken restaurant frequented by the social club I was
unofficially a member of. At first we never talked, but after dancing together
a couple times, we started to become friends. He became like a mentor to me
except that I can’t think of one thing I ever learned from him. He was pretty
tall, middle aged, a bit on the overweight side especially around the belly,
which was a testament to his capacity for consuming beer. He was balding a
little on the top of his head but made up for it with the length of his hair,
which was held together in the back in a salt-and-pepper ponytail, and with his
generous goatee. He was a jovial fellow, like a Korean Santa Claus. He was also
an avid badminton player.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One day in the fall, he asked me to join him for a meeting
of his badminton league. I had other plans, so I declined. He was disappointed.
The next time he asked I agreed, although I hadn’t played badminton since I was
a child in my grandparents’ backyard. I didn’t realize it was a serious sport.
We drove to the newly bulldozed and perfectly reconstructed Songdo on the
eastern side of Incheon. Little did I know this was a special day when the
“national representative” was going to make an appearance. After wondering all
day what the hell that was, they told me his name and I Googled it. He’s got a
bronze medal for badminton doubles from the Beijing Olympics. To make a long
story short, we hit it off, Carls got jealous, professed his love for me, was
promptly rejected, and stopped talking to me; and, I always thought I would end
up sleeping with the Olympic medalist and I’m pretty sure he thought so too but
somehow it never happened.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There was also my faux sugar daddy who drove me home from
Top every week because we lived near each other. We flirted shamelessly but I
never let it go anywhere. I didn’t see much of him after I moved out of that
apartment.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And there was the guy who drove my favorite car, the Hyundai
Tuscani (Tiburon in the American market). It’s not my favorite car because I
think it’s the best. It’s my favorite car because I think it’s pretty, it
drives quite well, it’s reliable as far as sporty cars go, and I could easily
one day afford one so it’s not a pipe dream. He was a middle school math
teacher, and also a snowboarding instructor. We had many deep conversations,
which I loved because he couldn’t speak English so it really tested my Korean.
He was patient and always made sure I understood everything he said. He would
pick me up, take me to dinner before going to the salsa club, and buy me juice
at the convenience store on the way home. He was 16 years older than me and had
a son who lived with his ex-wife. I ultimately didn’t date him because he had a
row of staples on the back of his head from some surgery I never dared ask
about and it creeped me the hell out. I never said I was perfect.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One day I went to a normal club with a group of people after
the salsa club closed and we didn’t want the night to end. I was dancing
merengue to hip hop music with an old Mexican man who was way too into me for
my taste when a tall, skinny, young Korean guy (just the way I liked them) took
an interest in me. I didn’t have any alcohol that night. I just want to make
that clear. I gradually shifted my focus to him and we danced close. He gave me
a cough drop for some reason (I wonder to this day if it was actually some kind
of drug, but I didn’t feel any effect) and we started kissing. He took me to
the exclusive club area on the second floor and paid the bouncer to get in. We
undulated to the music, as close as two strangers can be in the dark. He led me
up a few flights of stairs to where the lights were off and piss dripped from
the stairs above. He pulled out his small, half-hard penis and tried to squeeze
it into my pants while standing upright, ignoring the sound of footsteps on the
stairs below us. I stopped him. This was ridiculous. I went downstairs and
danced with his friend. I went back to the main club and looked for the people
I’d come with but they were long gone. A white guy grabbed my arm at the bar
and told me in French that I was the most beautiful girl in the club and could
he buy me a drink. I answered in French that I was sorry but I liked Korean
guys. He didn’t let go and insisted. I repeated that I wasn’t interested and
pulled my arm away. He left a bruise. I left the club. I napped in the subway
station and took the first train home.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The 6 months after I left my husband are a blur. I didn’t
eat much, I made up for lost sleep on the weekends, and I danced every moment I
could. I lost 10kg (22 pounds) by December and bought size 8 clothes for the
first time in my life when I visited the US for my friend’s wedding and
Christmas. I was ecstatic. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I had worked out a way to get a work visa so I could keep my
well-paid corporate job. After 6 months and countless promises, it fell apart
at the last minute. They gave me one week’s notice and no severance pay. My
husband and his father had been calling my boss and me making threats and
demanding that I sign the divorce papers I’d kept putting off until I could get
the work visa. I signed the papers. I was thin, dressed in Calvin Klein, and in
high heels so I was taller than my husband when I met him for the first time since
I’d left. When I saw him in that courthouse, he looked terrible and reeked of
cigarettes. That was the end of January. I would not hear from him again until
the summer, when he wrote me a long email saying he understood, he was sorry,
and he wished me all the best. I never answered.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I barely got out of bed for the next two months. This was
especially hard for my new boyfriend, who had been an intern at my company just
before I lost my job. He graduated 6 months ago and works there now. He is
doing very well. I asked him once why he stayed by my side through that
depression even though we barely knew each other. He, always logical, said that
I had been a strong, confident, successful woman before, and he knew I would be
again. He was right. He was often right. But he wasn’t right for long.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
During my depression, I didn’t dance. I gained back half of
the weight I’d lost. I barely talked to Kiki. I was done sleeping with
strangers and coming home after midnight. I was done with the job that had
brought us together. I felt like I was done with life. When I got back on my
feet (another story), I started dancing again. Dancing had become a barometer
of my mental health. In April, I met with a renowned psychiatrist. I had done
my research and I was pretty sure I had bipolar II disorder. I was right. He
put me on drugs. There aren’t really drugs made for bipolar disorder. There are
drugs for schizophrenia and for epilepsy that work, so I was on antipsychotics
and anticonvulsants. I stopped chewing gum to reduce the tension in my jaw. I
started paying attention to how things made me feel. What the triggers were for
both extreme moods.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Hypomania is a state found in people with bipolar II
disorder and cyclothymia. To my knowledge, these are the only groups that
experience it, although there are also people with just hypomania and no
depression but I believe they call that manic personality disorder. Don’t trust
me on that; I only have a minor in Psychology. Hypomania is not like the mania
of bipolar I disorder, where people become delusional and lose touch with
reality, often hearing voices much like schizophrenic people. It’s more subtle
than that. So subtle I thought I was just happy to be free of my husband until
I lost my job. Then, in the midst of the deepest depression I’d ever felt, I
looked back on the havoc I’d wreaked in my life over those 6 months.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Hypomania is dangerous because it is marked by
impulsiveness, risk-taking behavior, spending lots of money, starting multiple
projects and never finishing them (like piano lessons in English), and sexual
promiscuity. Check, check, check, check, and check. While salsa mitigated some
symptoms by being a regular physical activity, providing positive social
interaction, preventing insomnia by exhausting me, and being an outlet for all
the extra energy I had, it also gave me ample opportunity to make bad decisions
and spend lots of money.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
After starting treatment, while dating the boyfriend who had
been by my side during my depression, I continued dancing but without all the
bad decisions. Salsa became part of my identity, just like being a pianist
always has been. I was the white girl who was fluent in Korean and danced
salsa. I could always depend on salsa, especially when I needed some catharsis.
It was hard to gain access to a piano so I needed something else.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In December 2012, I finally gave up the long fight to get a
work visa. I had been working less than legally and it was eating away at my
nerves and becoming a stress for my benevolent boss. With my tail between my legs,
I returned to the US not to my Midwestern hometown but to the west coast. It’s
now June 2013 and I don’t have a job yet. I don’t have medical insurance and
ran out of medication long ago. I live in a house with my brother and 4 other
people, which can stress me out. Stress is not good for bipolar people. Neither
is being lonely. For the first month, I cried myself to sleep. I wanted to go
home to Korea where I had friends and a pseudo family. I wanted to be special
again. I wanted to find where it was that it all went wrong and do it right so
I could have a future. I still feel that sometimes.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In January 2013, I found a salsa club. In Korea, I learned
to dance on 2, which means girls put their right foot forward on beat 1. Here,
most people dance on 1, which means girls put their right foot back on beat 1.
I expected that, so I went to the group class that starts at 8pm and lasts
until open dancing at 9:30. I learned how to dance on 1 but was so turned
around I danced like a beginner all night. I went back the next week. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
By the
end of January I was a decent dancer and I had made three friends, each born in
a different country. One of those is now my best friend and I don’t know what
I’d do without her. I’ve slept with another twice but his family wouldn’t
approve if we dated because I’m white. It’s okay though because I have a
boyfriend I’m head over heels for. He wasn’t so happy when a Mexican guy I met
in a salsa club raped me about a month and a half ago. My brother doesn’t know
about that. Almost all of my friends here I met either by living with them or
through salsa dancing (a couple indirectly). My boyfriend doesn’t dance. I met
him online. Who knew the online dating thing can work sometimes? The rest of
the guys I met that way were creepy, friendzoned, or fell flat. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I am now a better dancer than I ever thought I could be, and
I’m still improving. I stopped taking classes after the first few months in
Korea, and have been learning on the dance floor at salsa clubs for almost two
years. When I dance, I lock my attention on the eyes of my dance partner and
anticipate his directions. I follow intricate patterns like water follows the
path of a riverbed. My body knows where the beat is without paying attention to
the music, and I merge with the sound and with my partner. We are two bodies,
slaves to the rhythm, stepping and turning like marionettes possessed by Pan.
With the right partner, I laugh and joke, my mirth mingling with the guitar’s
melody. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Each type of music and dance has its own flavor. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Salsa is dramatic, the beat racing your heart and daring
your feet to move faster than they should be physically capable of doing. It is
elegant and wild at the same time like a cheetah in motion. It is intricate and
simple, it is closeness and space, it is harsh staccatos and languid melodies,
it is contradiction in its raw and refined form.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Merengue is whimsical, sexy, and playful. It’s a tease. Your
feet march to the downbeat as your hips rise and fall with the upbeat, a
gyrating syncopation echoed in your shoulders. Your whole body sways
uncontrollably from the floor up in a controlled fashion. It’s about pushing
and pulling, winding and unwinding pairs of arms. Your heart drops in your
chest with each space between the drumbeats. The melodies and bodies spin
drunkenly as the beat pushes on unwaveringly. It is ecstasy captured and
bottled, released into a song and dance.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Cha cha and cha cha cha are languid. I’m personally not a
fan and usually consider it rest time, as do the throngs of salseros and
salseras at the bar downing water. But the few on the dance floor vary from
looking like people in an old folks’ home, down to the nostalgic look in their
eyes, to the girls with the sex kitten eyes who shake their hips suggestively
at each cha and the guys who gape and grin. It is young and old, a handing of
the baton and an evolution of an outdmoded dance.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Bachata is dessert. It is two bodies becoming one and
bending together like two halves of a rubber band. It is love, longing, regret,
pleading, lust in the voices of singers like Prince Royce. It is the shrill
twang of the guitar and the rolling rhythm that begs you to roll your hips. It
is understanding the music and your partner so intimately that nerve impulses
travel directly from the speakers and the leader’s body to your body without
routing through your brain. It is the forbidden touch of a friend or stranger
and the false promise of more, and just when you’re almost lost forever in the
music and the closeness it’s pulling away and turning, shaking off the touch
with a suggestive twitch of your hip. It feels like kissing in the rain or
flying in a dream. You know any boyfriend in his right mind would be jealous to
watch you dance with another man, and that makes it sexier, because it’s not
actually about sex and the misconception makes its true nature your little
secret. It’s about the music and trusting another person with your body,
knowing he won’t take advantage of it. It is leaning over the railing on the
edge of a cliff just enough to get a thrill but not enough to feel like you’re
going to fall. It is letting someone else move your body for you in time with
the music.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Lost in the music, I am not burdened by my past and my fears
of the future. The demons that chased me away from my home and across the globe
do not lurk in the shadows. The decisions I’ve made have no consequences, and
my heart is not a botched-up reconstruction of the infinitesimally small
fragments it’s been shattered into time and time again. I am not a shell of the
person I had the potential to become but never blossomed into. I am not angry
for no reason. I am not bipolar. I am dancing, and that is all there is, and it
is exhilarating. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What started for me as a way to shut my friend Kiki up ended
up quite possibly saving my life. If I hadn’t gone to that salsa club in
January, I would have no friends except the people I live with, only one of
whom I actually consider a friend. 15% of bipolar patients commit suicide.
After all I’ve lost I contemplated it often. I feel like a failure in life. I
was brave and resourceful and did well for a short time in Korea and for what?
I can’t even get a job in my home country. But it’s okay. I have my family, a
piano in my house, salsa at least once a week, and friends who really care
about me. I can count on those things, and half of them are thanks to salsa.
Thanks to my personal salsa fairy, Kiki, who taught me to say, “screw it all
and just dance!”</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2896866343594338160.post-91361506318844115282013-06-13T18:05:00.000+09:002013-06-13T18:05:05.247+09:00FragmentsShattered<br />
Fragments scattered across the world<br />
My sanity littered around the universe<br />
Multiverse<br />
Confused verses<br />
Uttered curses<br />
In tongues<br />
Screaming in my brain<br />
To drown out the thunderous shame<br />
At the memory of what could have been<br />
And what I chose instead<br />
The fighting in my head<br />
My life in tatters<br />
Glaring daggers<br />
At the mirror<br />
The future's looming nearer<br />
I am unarmed and ill-prepared<br />
I don't dare try again what I dared<br />
Luck was on my side<br />
But now I hide<br />
No confidence in my stride<br />
No definition in my character<br />
A smiling caricature<br />
Ready to burst<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
Over 6 months I've been in the US and I have nothing to show for it but a bank account in the negative. Socially, I have yet to commit sabotage in all arenas. I still have no idea what to do with my life.<br />
<br />
When I was married in Korea, we had a plan. Our little fusion burrito restaurant in the countryside failed, and we scrapped that plan. We moved to Seoul, I started working at Samsung, he started writing a book, and we had another plan. Two months after he started writing his book, I asked him how far he had gotten. He said, "I've written out the outline for the whole book and I'm almost done with chapter one." I said that was good progress and supported him emotionally and financially. Four months later I asked him how far he had gotten on his book. He said, "I listened to some guy's lecture on how to write a book and had to start over. I've written the outline for the whole book and I'm almost done with chapter one." A couple months later I left him. Half a year after that, we officially got a divorce because I found out that I was never going to get the work visa I'd been promised, and my ex-husband and his father had been calling my boss and me making threats. I lost my visa, my job, and my plans for the future. I was a 23-year-old divorcee with no future. I managed to scrape by for another 10 months in Korea, but that moment at the end of January 2012 is when it was all over.<br />
<br />
I am writing this because I want to stress how important it was for me to know where my life was going, and how broken I was when it all fell apart.<br />
<br />
After I left my ex, I started working on arrangements for a work visa so I could keep my job at Samsung. My future relied on it. I was going to work there as a global consultant until the program was over in 2015. Then I would use the skills and connections I'd amassed over the years to get onto a marketing or strategy team and continue working at Samsung for at least another 5 years. Then I'd maybe use that experience to get a job in the US and move back with my Korean husband and our cute little mixed kids (2 of them). I didn't want my children going to school in Korea because the education system puts a lot of stress on kids and they thus have the highest suicide rates in any OECD country (in all age groups). I didn't divorce my husband because he was Korean; I divorced him because he didn't work and he showed no potential for being a provider in case something happened to me. That, and he did something unforgivable that I don't want to write on the internet. I assumed I would marry again and he would be Korean and everything would work out according to my plan because it was logical. After quite a bit of back-and-forth between my contracting company and government offices, I was just a couple of days away from getting my work visa. The HR person in charge of my program told my supervisor and my contracting agent (but not me) that Samsung would not be employing anyone in my position without a permanent residency visa. I couldn't get a work visa without a contract, and I couldn't get a contract with a work visa. I was effectively fired without being fired.<br />
<br />
After about 2 months of being basically bedridden by depression, I lucked into another job. I needed money badly, so I started spreading the word that I would be tutoring English again. My boyfriend at the time, whom I had met at Samsung just before the end, was a member of Toastmasters International. He took me to a couple meetings here and there, and I eventually became a member and attended regularly. After one meeting, a group had gone out for chicken and beer (a popular and delicious meal in Korea). I was talking to one man I knew worked in a multinational company. I told him that I was an English tutor and that if he knew anyone who wanted tutoring to let me know. The next week, I saw him again, and he said, "I think I can give you a job." I answered, "oh, you know someone who needs a tutor?" He said, "no, I want you to work for me." "Oh, you want me to tutor you?" "No, come work for my company." I loved that job. I made another plan. They couldn't get me a visa. I came back to the US with my tail between my legs.<br />
<br />
My mother says that I should never think of myself as a failure. I went to the other side of the world, ill-prepared, alone, and made it for almost 4 years before being forced to come back not because I couldn't find a job but because I couldn't get a visa. Sometimes I think she's right. Sometimes I wonder if I had just stuck to my plan when I first started university and become a doctor if I'd be happier.<br />
<br />
Everyone has their "what if" scenarios. Most people wonder what their lives would be like if they did something crazy like run away to the other side of the world the day after their 21st birthdays. I wonder what my life would be like if I hadn't done that. I don't regret it, and I value the experiences and relationships I gained from that adventure. But, I feel that it has defined me and now that I'm back in the US I don't know who I am anymore. I feel like a child actor the world has forgotten about.<br />
<br />
For about 6 months after I left my ex-husband and before I lost my visa, I was hypomanic. I was great, respected, successful. I lived in one luxury high-rise and worked in another. I played piano with the lights off gazing at the tiny people below my 19th floor window walking through pools of light from the street lamps as my fingers danced to the rhythm of their footsteps. I danced salsa in the basement clubs in the hottest districts of Seoul half the nights of the week and drank in exotic bars on the weekends. I knew the spiderweb of the Seoul Metro better than many Koreans. I was classy and climbing the ladder during the day and sexy and alluring at night. I spent money as quickly as it came in and I was making more than I'd ever made before. I wasn't getting enough sleep and I didn't feel like I needed it. I was self-destructing and everyone loved me. I was happy.<br />
<br />
And then I was sad.<br />
<br />
And then I was medicated.<br />
<br />
And now I'm in another foreign place and I don't have anything familiar from that Korean life that I built. I don't have medical insurance so I can't get treatment. I don't have a job so I don't have a normal schedule or money for a healthy diet. I don't have the social support I need, although I'm quickly building good relationships here, largely thanks to salsa dancing. I feel I have nothing and my essence is fading with the memories of my life in Korea. Without the social constructs I'm used to working in and without a job to define me, I don't have anything to introduce myself as. Hello, my name is Kristin and I used to be someone on the other side of the world in a country you've probably never thought of visiting. Now I'm just a wreck with no idea what to do with her life.<br />
<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2896866343594338160.post-92172437621701450642013-04-17T08:51:00.000+09:002013-04-17T08:51:31.592+09:00Insomnia and Fogged WindowsI am not neglecting this blog because I'm busy or forgot about it. I merely have nothing to write. The days are blurring together. I have no idea what to do with my life or how to do it. I don't know where to start. I feel useless and small, unimportant and afraid. I am a child in an adult's body. The day after my 21st birthday, I was on a plane to the other side of the world to start a new life. The day after my 25th birthday, I felt like I was still 21 and that my time in Korea was a dream.<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><br /><br />
I am hitting the dating scene again. Apparently I'm into Indian guys now. I have the strangest taste. Luckily, Indian guys are also into me. It works out well for everyone. If only I felt like I deserved the attention. But I'm unemployed, in a rut, with no future. My best bet is to become a trophy wife and stay at home cleaning, raising children, and playing piano all day. Just thinking about it makes me want to throw up. Not that being a housewife is a bad choice; it's just a bad choice for me. I need to do something.<br />
<br />
I signed up to be a Red Cross volunteer. I have orientation on April 23. I want to help with one of the international departments. There's one program that helps refugees and immigrant families settle here. There's another that helps people find their lost family members all over the world. I'm hoping my volunteering can help me build a career in the helping people globally arena.<br />
<br />
I keep thinking about stories of famous people who had hopeless times and pulled through to do something amazing. I keep thinking about all the other people who had hopeless times and were swallowed by their lack of destiny to die or lead useless lives. I keep wondering which type of person I'll be. When I was in high school, I was a waitress in a restaurant. One of my managers was a woman in her 50s who had two sons, both of whom worked at the restaurant at one point or another. One was in and out of jail, the other fighting alcoholism. That scares me to death. That could be me. That could be anyone. I know that's silly of me to think; I already have something they didn't: a university degree and corporate experience. But it still keeps me up at night.<br />
<br />
Everything keeps me up at night these days. Thoughts about nothing, about darkness and hopelessness, about my past and about my future. My past is becoming foggy like a car window on a cold day. I try to draw a smiley face in the fog and see through the eyes, but it's still unclear and far away. My future is still a black hole that swallows day after day of the present. I can't sleep at night so I sleep all day. My housemates are getting worried. I don't know if I care enough about myself to fix it, but I care enough about them. Especially my brother. I'm trying not to sleep all day anymore.<br />
<br />
My body is reacting negatively to California. Don't get me wrong, I love it here. But I'm not used to the particular plants and the scent of the air and I'm allergic to everything this spring. I had allergy induced asthma as a kid and had 6 years of allergy shots to cure it. It mostly worked, but every spring or every time I sleep next to a cat I cough a lot. My housemates are worried I'm dying. I know it will pass. It's very obnoxious, though.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2896866343594338160.post-35942475076959261272013-02-13T16:07:00.000+09:002013-02-13T16:07:11.285+09:00Settling InI am no longer miserable. I no longer despise living in my own country. I can't believe I'm saying this after how vehemently opposed I was to returning from Korea, but I am happy to be home.<br />
<br />
The moment I realized this was yesterday when my roommate in Korea sent me a message saying she found a job that could give me a visa, and it wasn't English teaching. That's exactly what I wanted, what I had been waiting and hoping for. But when I saw the message, my heart dropped.<br />
<a name='more'></a>Shouldn't I have been giddy with anticipation, prancing around the room like an idiot? A month ago I'd have given anything for that opportunity. But I don't want it. I don't want to go back to cold winters and humid, mosquito-ridden summers. I don't want to be the outsider anymore. I don't want to always have to worry that I could lose my visa and be stuck with nothing again. I loved living in Korea so much, but now it feels like this was my time to come home. So I told her thanks but no thanks; come visit me sometime.<br /><br />
<br />
It was my grandfather's 80th birthday last weekend so my brother and I flew out to Missouri to meet the family at his house for a party. It was rambunctious, infectious, and full of familial love. I felt closer to my family than I have in years because I wasn't extremely jetlagged when I talked to them. Now seeing each other is a matter of a weekend and a few hundred dollars, not two weeks and at least $1500 for plane tickets alone. <br />
<br />
I've become a member of the salsa community here in San Jose and I recognize faces and have a few phone numbers. I've even made a couple of pretty close friends. And, through a strange series of events, I am also dating a guy I met through a salsa friend. By strange series of events, I mean that my salsa friend went to a Super Bowl party and texted a picture to someone else and me. The someone else texted me back while trying to text her. I asked who it was and made a joke that it was "nice to text-meet you" and he kept texting me so I kept responding. Turns out he's quite attractive and we get along great, not to mention I get along with his roommate and his dog.<br />
<br />
Now, I can't talk about getting used to California without talking about weed. As my regular readers will know, I like to keep a level of candor in this blog and I have no intention of sacrificing that now. There are now 5 people in my life who get high on a weekly or daily basis. There are about 12 people in my life right now. I have never smoked anything but hookah, and that only once, and I used to be very self-righteous about that. I was also very judgmental of people who smoked pot. In Korea, I was offended when people assumed I smoked because I'm American. I was so naive that I confused the smell of marijuana with the smell of a skunk when I first got here, to the raucous laughter of my companions. Now I'm excited to try making special brownies after I get a job. It must be after I get a job because potential employers could drug test, and pot stays in the body for almost a month. Crack stays for 4 days. So not fair.<br />
<br />
So why the big change in opinion? I could do a research post on the subject, but I think you'd be better served by Googling "why marijuana should be legal". Basically, it comes down to a direct comparison with alcohol, which by the way I am drinking again after going off my bipolar medications (no health insurance, no choice; I ran out). For all I know, I'm entering a hypomanic state and that's why I feel like my life is getting leaps and bounds better and I'm accepting of just about everything. But I digress. Alcohol can easily be consumed to the point of fatality. Pot cannot. Alcohol is processed by the body at a rate of approximately one standard drink per hour. Pot generally lasts about an hour no matter how much you smoke. Alcohol is technically poisoning your body and therefore leaves you dehydrated and feeling sick. Pot mimics neurotransmitters in the brain associated with happiness and has few or no physical ramifications for most people, aside from coughing. Alcohol is physically addictive. Pot is not. Alcohol has adverse long-term effects including brain cell death and liver damage. Pot does not have any long-term effects. Alcohol causes behavioral changes including aggression, risky sexual behavior, and compromised decision-making. Pot does not. The list goes on. Basically, if I willingly drink alcohol but admonish marijuana because someone from 1937 told me to, I am a sheep. Baaa. From a health standpoint and an economic standpoint, it makes sense to legalize weed. In the meantime, the punishment for possessing/smoking weed in California is a slap on the wrist equivalent to a parking ticket, so why not try it?<br />
<br />
Anyway, I have a promising job interview tomorrow so I should get some sleep.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2896866343594338160.post-69849406281503598472013-01-24T15:05:00.000+09:002013-01-24T15:05:19.950+09:00Spreading Myself ThinI've been looking for a job unsuccessfully in San Jose since I got back from Korea in mid-December, so I widened my search to include the whole San Francisco Bay area. <br />
<br />
But in the meantime, a friend from Korea asked me to go to Dubai, and I've wanted to try living there since I worked at Samsung C&T (which was the main contractor on the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world). So I'm also looking for a job in Dubai. Turns out I have more connections in the UAE than in the US. Funny how life works.<br />
<br />
And, of course, I'm still trying to get back to Korea doing anything but teaching English. I really miss Seoul and all my friends there, and I miss the culture and food and everything but the weather, really.<br />
<br />
I realized through all of this that I don't like living in my home country.<br />
<a name='more'></a> And I think my brother put his finger on it: I'm not special here, but I am overseas. In Korea, I'm white so I'm automatically special. Add to that that I can speak Korean and I have never taught kindergarteners English and I'm really special. In the US, I'm just that girl who likes South Korea a lot and is culturally out of touch.<br />
<br />
I mess up English idioms and simple phrases like "have at it" and "go for it", instead of which I said "go at it" to tell my housemate he could have some of my sandwich meat. I don't know recent figures or events from the news or pop culture, and I'm not up-to-date on politics at all. I can barely remember how to drive and I hit my mother's car on a parking garage pillar, taking out the passenger's side turn signal. I am a terrible American. I'm just not good at being American. I never really was in the first place, and I think that's the root of why I left.<br />
<br />
I never felt like I fit in anywhere. I'm a non-technical person in a family of engineers. I was the smart goody two-shoes in elementary school and a weirdo in middle school, then one of the inert crowd in high school. In college, I jumped from friend group to friend group and boyfriend to boyfriend and always got tired of everyone. Then I went to Korea and I didn't fit in, but I looked different and talked different and had a different passport so it was okay. I loved that. I was special. I didn't fit in- but in a good way. People loved talking to me and I didn't feel awkward because dammit I was special and whatever I said was interesting just because I said it in English or as a foreigner in Korean.<br />
<br />
Here, I feel like all I can talk about is Korea and nobody cares because it's a small country and nobody will ever visit it. I want to share "my culture" by feeding my housemates Korean food and talking about cultural differences, but it's just strange because I'm not ACTUALLY Korean. I'm not Korean and I don't feel American, so what the hell am I?<br />
<br />
That's why when my friend said, "come to Dubai" I was like, "I have nothing better to do so why not?" If I can get there, we'll have another name change on our hands and my blog will still be interesting. I will still be interesting. I will still be special. I will run and hide from my home country because I don't feel good here and I will be the new kid on the block again. I'll be a foreigner but it'll be okay because I'll actually be a foreigner.<br />
<br />
I don't like feeling like a foreigner in my own country.<br />
<br />
I don't like living in my own country.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2896866343594338160.post-28541478359107573002013-01-05T10:02:00.000+09:002013-01-05T10:02:39.131+09:00Where to Work?San Jose is a global city. It feels small but don't be fooled- there are brilliant people from all over the world gathered here in Silicon Valley. And there are a lot of job seekers and not enough jobs for all of us. Happy New Year everyone, from an unemployed, soon to be homeless, Kristin.<br />
<br />
But don't worry! I will get back on my feet! Speaking of feet, I was walking to a mall that's about a 40 minute walk from my current place the other day and I smelled something familiar. The stench of rotting ginko under my feet brought me back to the streets of Seoul in the fall and early winter. I never thought I'd close my eyes and take that in as a pleasant fragrance, but I did. I stopped in my tracks on the sidewalk and sucked the stench into my nostrils and was transported to my walk to the subway station from my studio apartment in Gangnam (Yeoksam). I remembered the crowded subway line number 2 and the station two stops away (Samseong) where I worked in Trade Tower above COEX mall. I remembered how in the summer my life was right on track: a great boyfriend, a great apartment, a great job, great friends, walking distance to great salsa clubs.... What happened? Life happened.<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a>Now I widened the radius of my job search to San Francisco and the whole Bay Area. I'd like to live and work in San Francisco because I like big cities. I'm not a huge fan of driving. I'm also semi-secretly looking for jobs in Korea. I have to hold out hope. Actually, I've recently been thinking of just taking a job anywhere in the world and going with it. If any of my readers have connections and would like to help, I'd appreciate it. I'm posting my resume without any contact information for obvious reasons. And for those of you who are just wondering what it is I've done that I can't get a job easily, you can keep reading.<br /><br />
<br />
Here's a version of my resume:<br />
<br />
Citizenship: USA<br />
<br />
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Education</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; text-indent: -.5in;">
<u><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">2010</span></u><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> <span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Michigan State University</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .75in; mso-list: l3 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Bachelor
of Science - Interdisciplinary Studies in Social Science (IDS): International
Studies major</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .75in; mso-list: l3 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Psychology
cognate/minor</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Work Experience</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<u><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><br /></span></span></u></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<u><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">4/2/2012
– 12/7/2012</span></u><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Global
Consultant </span></div>
<ul style="margin-top: 0in;" type="disc">
<li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l2 level1 lfo5;"><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Lundbeck Korea Pharmaceutical Company </span></li>
</ul>
<ul style="margin-top: 0in;" type="disc">
<li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2;"><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Seoul, South Korea</span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2;"><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Assisted CEO, regulatory affairs (RA) manager, finance
manager, and marketing team in correspondence with HQ in Copenhagen,
Denmark</span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Wingdings; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Edited English documents
including contracts and assisted in English presentation preparation; gave
English classes to coworkers and customers, including presentation
workshops</span><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Wingdings; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Often worked in Korean
and assisted in translating Korean to English for reports to HQ</span><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></li>
</ul>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .5in;">
<u><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">11/30/2010 – 1/31/2012</span></u><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> <span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Global
Consultant</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: .5in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Samsung
C&T Corporation Engineering & Construction</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: .5in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Seoul,
South Korea</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: .5in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Scheduled,
attended, and evaluated 16 1-hour English business meetings per week; designed
and implemented an incentive scheme for higher attendance, effort, and
performance</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: .5in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Developed
and applied other in-house education programs: English speaking and writing,
business etiquette, culture, etc.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: .5in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Worked
with two other consultants to ensure continuity of programs throughout the
Business Unit</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: .5in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Edited
and produced weekly English newsletter focusing on the construction industry
and Samsung’s successes and character, as well as global culture</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<u><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">2007
– 2012</span></u><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> <span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>Private English as a Second
Language Tutor</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-list: l4 level1 lfo3; tab-stops: .5in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Self-employed (East Lansing, MI, U.S.A. and South
Korea)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-list: l4 level1 lfo3; tab-stops: .5in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Tutored students from age 7 to age 50</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-list: l4 level1 lfo3; tab-stops: .5in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Countries of origin of students: South Korea,
China, Saudi Arabia, Madagascar</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-list: l4 level1 lfo3; tab-stops: .5in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Created an English resource website for students</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<u><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">2008
– 2009</span></u><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Personal
Assistant<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-list: l4 level1 lfo3; tab-stops: .5in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Assisted a disabled man with weekly tasks,
including laundry and grocery shopping, as well as vacation preparation and
minor car maintenance</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<u><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">2006
– 2008</span></u><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Private
Piano Teacher</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-list: l4 level1 lfo3; tab-stops: .5in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Self-employed (East Lansing, MI, U.S.A.)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-list: l4 level1 lfo3; tab-stops: .5in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Created all teaching materials including music
theory resource and songs</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<u><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">2006
summer</span></u><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Cashier
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo4; tab-stops: .5in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Busch’s Grocery Store (Rochester, MI, U.S.A.)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<u><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">2004
– 2006</span></u><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Waitress</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo4; tab-stops: .5in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Big Boy Restaurant (Rochester, MI, U.S.A.)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .5in;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Languages</span></b><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">English
(<i>native</i>), Korean (<i>conversational fluency, writing/reading</i>),
French (<i>reading</i>), Japanese (<i>novice</i>)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 63.0pt; text-indent: -63.0pt;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Travel
Experience</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 27.0pt; text-indent: -27.0pt;">
<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">South Korea (lived for 3 1/2
years), Canada, France, Monaco, Germany, England, Japan</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 63.0pt; text-indent: -63.0pt;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Skills</span></b></div>
<ul style="margin-top: 0in;" type="disc">
<li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l1 level1 lfo4;"><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Public speaking and presentations (member of Toastmasters
International for 1 year)</span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l1 level1 lfo4;"><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Great interpersonal skills</span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l1 level1 lfo4;"><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Proficiency in Microsoft Office (in English and Korean)</span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l1 level1 lfo4;"><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Basic web design using templates</span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l1 level1 lfo4;"><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Basic desktop publishing (e.g. newsletters)</span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l1 level1 lfo4;"><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Conflict resolution (received training)</span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l1 level1 lfo4;"><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Working in a team and alone</span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l1 level1 lfo4;"><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Scheduling and re-scheduling meetings on a regular
basis</span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l1 level1 lfo4;"><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Finding the best deal on airplane tickets</span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l1 level1 lfo4;"><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Salsa dancing</span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l1 level1 lfo4;"><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Piano composition</span></li>
</ul>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2896866343594338160.post-75162881491452607072012-12-28T14:52:00.001+09:002012-12-28T14:53:30.400+09:00Reverse Culture Shock and ReminiscencesNow that I've been back in the US for a few weeks, there are some things I've noticed about myself, about my country, and about Korea that I had taken for granted. It still aches to think about what I've left behind and I still feel my future is a black hole. It's like my ribs are made of rubber and every time I breathe my lungs and heart bend them backwards to try to escape from my body. I scream with no sound alone in my room and sob myself to sleep silently. I am homesick for a country that was never mine and a family with which I share no blood. But it's not all bad. I'm breaking the barrier between the present and the future with baby steps, and eventually I'll get my training wheels off and ride forward on my own again.<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a>In America, everything is so big. Cars are big. Lanes for cars on the roads are big. The people driving the cars are big. The portions in the restaurants the people drive their cars to are big. The houses they sleep in at night are big and the dogs they cuddle with in their big beds are big. In Korea everything is so much smaller except for the buildings. The buildings in Korea are so much taller than here in San Jose. I'm so used to being shaded by buildings that when the sun heats my skin as I walk to the big grocery store, I feel it acutely. But here there are so many trees and fruits and bushes and flowers and so much grass. It's so green even in December. The pocketbooks of the landscapers must be big.<br />
<br />
The other day, my housemate was cleaning and shining his shoes. It took him a very long time. I found this curious, as I am so used to the shoe repair and shine kiosks in Korea. There are little steel boxes, about two square meters, in which a middle aged or old man sits on a stool and waits for people to come so he can work on their shoes. If you're a man, you can take off your shoes and put on slippers, then sit on the little bench as the man puts your shoes on his post and very quickly (everything in Korea is so fast) cleans and shines them for just a couple of dollars (a couple thousand won). If you're a woman and your high heel is broken, you can also put on slippers and sit on the bench as the man puts your shoe on his post and repairs it. He'll even put in insoles (깔창), and some of them copy keys, too. These guys will even come to you in your office building. As I watched my housemate scrub his shoe with a brush, I suddenly had the urge to cry because I missed the shoe kiosk guys so much.<br />
<br />
It's not that I have some convoluted love story with a shoe kiosk man. That would be so wrong on so many levels. It's just what they represent: everything is accessible in walking distance and/or deliverable in Korea. Here, I spent over half an hour walking around looking for a damn coffee shop after searching on Google maps and one of them was impossible to find, while the other was out of business. The only things that deliver are pizza and chicken. And FedEx, of course. Ha. It's because we have so much land and everything is spread out so everyone has cars.<br />
<br />
I don't have a car yet because I failed the driver's test I took just days after getting off the plane. So I'm basically confined to the house. I miss the subway system in Seoul. There are 9 numbered lines that intertwine throughout the city, plus at least 4 named lines that connect Seoul to neighboring cities like Bundang (which has the Bundang Line and the New Bundang Line). Then there are buses literally everywhere. It's more inconvenient to have a car than not to have one because parking is a pain and it's expensive to drive.<br />
<br />
I lost my English and my sarcasm in Korea. Sarcasm is not something Koreans understand easily. It's just not in the culture. So, people like me who live there long enough learn not to be sarcastic. But I used to be extremely sarcastic. I also used to be much more eloquent and have a more expansive vocabulary, which is evidenced by some of my early posts on this blog. But living in Korea where nobody understood complicated English made me use simpler sentence structures and vocabulary. Now I feel like a dunce. In Korea, if I spoke English, everyone thought I was intelligent. If I spoke Korean, which I speak quite well, everyone thought I was intelligent. Here, I don't want to speak so I'm quiet. My personality is gone. It doesn't help that the only people around me are in technical fields and that's all they talk about, so I have nothing to add to the conversation. Hell, I'm lucky to even understand the conversation.<br />
<br />
Right before I left Korea, my then boyfriend (we agreed to break up when I came here because we have no chance to be in the same country in the forseeable future) asked if there was anything I wanted to do or eat before I left. I thought long and hard. I wanted to see the waves break on the southern shores of Korea, but I'd seen them. I wanted to eat samgyetang (chicken soup with ginseng) at the famous restaurant near Kyungbokgung (a palace on the northern side of Seoul) and eat sweet red bean porridge (단팥죽) at The Second Most Delicious Place in Seoul (서울에서 두쩨로 마싰는 집), but we had already done that together a couple times. I wanted to see the Seoul lantern festival along Chunggye Stream, but we had done that with close friends a few weeks earlier. I wanted to eat jjajang noodles one more time, and Korean fried chicken (which is much better than American) one more time. I wanted to have kimchi fried rice and kimchi pancakes. But I had eaten them so many times. I wanted to do everything and see everything and eat everything one more time, but I had done so much already. I finally thought of something I hadn't done. I hadn't eaten on the Han River. So he took me for a romantic lunch at a restaurant floating on the Han River. The river and the skyline on the other side were beautiful, and a couple of ducks swan by leisurely. Right now I miss that moment. I miss all the moments. I will treasure them and miss them for the rest of my life.<br />
<br />
Now it's time for me to make new moments. I'm afraid it will take quite a bit of time. So far my best moments here were with that same boyfriend when we visited over the summer. That doesn't make me feel any better because I miss him as a boyfriend but even more as a best friend. Over the past year, he has helped me put the pieces of my life back together and given me the courage to make it despite the odds. So this paragraph of this post on the internet for all to see is dedicated to you, DH Lee. Thank you. I'll be okay, but you know that.<br />
<br />
And this small paragraph is dedicated to those of my readers who have commented recently to give me support. Thank you so much. It may not seem like much, but well wishes from strangers and friends alike help me make it to tomorrow. Everyone needs some encouragement in life, not just me. My advice for the day is: encourage someone you know. They just might need it.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2896866343594338160.post-18570395825440624822012-12-19T10:22:00.001+09:002012-12-19T10:23:34.067+09:00Name Change: No More Kristin's Korean LifeYes folks, that's right. I've made it back to the US. I'm now in Silicon Valley, which is like a country of it's own.<br />
<br />
I have already passed the written driver's test with flying colors and failed the behind-the-wheel test with a jerk of a tester, and I've found the bus stop that takes me to downtown San Jose, where I might get a job.<br />
<br />
I have discovered the ups and downs of house sharing. I live with my brother, his girlfriend, a gay guy, and two straight guys. There's an Austrian girl coming in January so I'll either be kicked out or I'll be her roommate.<br />
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I have made a bank account with Bank of America and am scared of their overdraft fees.<br />
<br />
I have a funny accent.<br />
<br />
Welcome home, me. Welcome home.<br />
<br />
I wish I were still in Korea.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2896866343594338160.post-39544216796542193922012-11-27T16:26:00.000+09:002012-11-27T16:26:17.312+09:00The Future is a Black Hole Full of PromiseWill the job searching never end??<br />
First I was job searching in Korea from January to March, then again from August to November, and now I've been job searching online for jobs in the South Bay area for about a month. I'm right where I started- nowhere!<br />
<br />
The future is a black hole waiting to swallow me up and the next step I take will define what's on the other side. I hope it's not angry aliens. Ha!<br />
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<a name='more'></a><br /><br />
It's gotten me thinking about what I want in life. What career path is best for me? I think I would do well in either marketing or HR. But I don't know for sure. I've been thinking of going back to school to become a psychiatrist. But where would that money come from? I think I could get into Stanford with well-written essays about my experiences here in Korea, but would I be able to push through to graduation? I barely made it through my bachelor's degree. Granted, I was working all the time and my priorities were not in the order necessary for a high GPA.<br />
<br />
I don't even know where I'll be living in three weeks. It's a flashback to almost 4 years ago when I got ready to get on a plane to Korea and not look back.<br />
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California is like another country within the US. I'll be suffering from culture shock and reverse culture shock at the same time. I have a feeling it will be just as interesting as my Korean life. Maybe I'll keep blogging: "Kristin's <s>Korean</s> Californian Life".<br />
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I have so many things to do and so little time. 11 days and counting.<br />
<br />
Once again, like my arrival in Korea, like my divorce and losing my job at Samsung, I am embarking on an unknown new beginning. My heart is beating faster every day. Maybe I should stop drinking coffee.<br />
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I really hope this is the last new beginning brought on by the necessary end of something else. I would like more new beginnings like a new job I love, a real wedding, winning the lottery. They're all equally likely at this point.<br />
<br />
But as I write this I realize that I have had just as many happy new beginnings as forced ones, and sometimes they were the same. I was happy when I first got married, when we started our restaurant together (before it failed three months later), when I got the job at Samsung, and later at Lundbeck. I was happy when the divorce went through and I was free. I was happy for those new beginnings. And honestly, I'm brimming with excitement and anticipation to go to California. I never thought I'd go there this early in my life. It was always my reward in the future for when I got rich and successful. I never imagined going there as a pauper. But heaven is heaven, no matter the road that takes one there.<br />
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Guess I don't need my winter coat anymore, huh?Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2896866343594338160.post-20170807270373520922012-11-19T16:53:00.000+09:002012-11-19T16:53:58.787+09:00Shameless AdvertisingDear readers,<br />
<br />
I will move out of my apartment at the end of this month, and I still have a lot to get rid of. If you're in Seoul, this is a unique opportunity to meet me by buying my stuff. Just go to <a href="http://buykristinsstuff.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">this website</a> and see if there's anything you want. If there is, follow the directions on the home page to email me.<br />
<br />
Thanks in advance for your financial contributions (I'm broke) and your help in lifting my material burdens so I can leave with less stress!<br />
<br />
KristinUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2896866343594338160.post-78138718425869730972012-11-14T14:06:00.000+09:002012-11-14T14:06:12.961+09:00Choices and FailurePreparing to go home is a lot of work.<br />
<br />
I can't seem to find a new tenant for my apartment, and I'm having trouble selling my stuff (although I came up with an online auction idea and asked my friends to bid for items).<br />
<br />
My plane ticket is for December 8th and I will leave my place probably on the last day of November to stay with a friend for a week. I will work until December 5th.<br />
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But the hardest part of preparing to go back is preparing emotionally.<br />
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<a name='more'></a><br /><br />
When I came to Korea, the world was at my fingertips. I could do anything and I was free. But now the constraints of visa issues and financial problems have come down like a net around me and I'm no longer free. The world had turned its back on me and is walking away, out of reach. I have made my choices and they have led me here to failure. I am not going back to the States with my head held high; I am going back with my tail between my legs begging my mommy to save me.<br />
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Yes, I have a few companies interested in interviews with me when I get to CA, but none of them are sure things and I'm afraid to fail again. And again. And again.<br />
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When I look at myself through others' eyes, I am a strong, independent woman who has lived more than most people my age or even older. I am bright and friendly, creative and intelligent. My honesty is endearing, as is my smile.<br />
<br />
When I look at myself through my own eyes, I am a weak, dependent little girl who has made stupid choices that have brought me to a corner that I have to back out of and start over. I am scared of social situations and have lost most of my creativity and curiosity as I've become jaded as I age beyond my years. I am honest to a fault and I don't care, and my smile is only real some of the time. I am afraid of everything, and I have nothing to show for my effort.<br />
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I could just teach English and all my troubles would go away, but I don't want that career path. So in others' eyes, where I feel I have failed, could it be that I have made a choice to try for something better?Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2896866343594338160.post-88866655537035657292012-10-31T14:57:00.000+09:002012-10-31T14:57:02.510+09:00Korean Everydayness: Dental HygieneI can't believe I haven't written about this yet. Koreans and their love affair with toothbrushes: it's one of the strangest things about living here. That's not to say their teeth are any better-looking than Americans' on average, because they're about the same. It's just that Koreans spend so much TIME brushing their teeth... loudly. And in public. Often.<br />
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<a name='more'></a>In my office building, there are two bathroom stalls and three sinks in the women's bathroom. This isn't strange at all, right? Yesterday, I was waiting for one of the stalls to open up because both were occupied, and there was a woman brushing her teeth at one of the sinks. There was also a cup with another toothbrush next to another sink. This didn't strike me as odd. After about a minute (yes a full 60 seconds or so), a stall opened up and I went in. At this point, the woman who had just left my stall washed her hands and started brushing her teeth, too. I heard two toothbrushes in motion (chika chika in Korean) for another full minute or so, and when I came out to wash my hands the first woman was still brushing her teeth, as was the second. Then the first woman started rinsing her mouth with copious amounts of water scooped from the sink, and rinsed her toothbrush by rubbing it with her finger under the running water. I dried my hands and walked out as the sounds of tooth brushing went on behind me. This wasn't strange whatsoever.<br />
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Koreans brush their teeth everywhere: at work after lunch, in salsa clubs before dancing, in subway stations, at restaurants, etc. If there is a sink with running water, chances are a Korean has brushed their teeth there within the past week. Probably more like the last 24 hours.<br />
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The amazing thing is not only where and how many times a day they brush their teeth, but how they brush them. It's like they're bent on scraping every last bit of enamel off of every last tooth. I suspect this is why their teeth are no prettier than ours: because some of them actually do scrape all the enamel off because they brush too hard and too long. Then when they're done brushing their teeth, they rinse their mouths like there's some kind of poison in there. It reminds me of the chemical wash stations in labs at high school and college.<br />
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Then there's the spitting. Women don't do it as much as men, but I can hear it clearly from any men's bathroom or from my neighbors' homes. They hock the biggest lugies possible and spit them in the sink at Mach 3. The spitting isn't confined to toothbrushing time, either. It occurs on the streets, in parks, on the sidewalks, in the subway stations (old men), on mountain hiking paths. Everywhere you can imagine spitting in public has little, well actually they're pretty big, spit stains on the ground waiting for the next bout of rain to wash them away only to be replaced soon after.<br />
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The newest craze in toothbrushing in Korea are electric toothbrushes, of course. The US is crazy for them, too, and has been for years. There's actually controversy about which kind of toothbrush is better. I personally just got an Oral B electric toothbrush, and I have to say my vote's for that. My teeth feel so smooth- like there's no enamel left!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2896866343594338160.post-52234346046065668752012-10-31T14:33:00.000+09:002012-10-31T14:33:27.095+09:00100% Sure I'm Going to CAThis blog will no longer be about my life in Korea after December this year because I won't be here anymore. I never heard from the company I had the interview with, and maybe it's for the best. If they had failed to get me a visa as well, I would be crushed and would end up going back to the US with less than what I have now- which is nothing.<br />
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Just thought you might like to know. Now back to blog titles... Kristin's <s>Korean</s> Life?Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2896866343594338160.post-91245501212397443542012-10-28T18:16:00.001+09:002012-10-29T09:48:53.272+09:0070% SureI haven't heard from the company I interviewed with last Friday. I told the CEO I needed to know by the first of November so there's still a slim chance but he said he'd get in touch by the end of this past week. Hence the title: I'm 70% sure I'm going back to the US at the beginning of December. I will post again on or after November first. <br />
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Actually, I'm a bit relieved. The choice has, for all intents and purposes, been made. I have come up with a creative way to try to sell all my things at prices that can actually help me. I have started making a mental list of everything I have to do. Get a new tenant and notify the landlord and pay associated fees but get my security deposit back. Cancel my cell phone contract and pay the rest on my phone. Pay back my friend who used to be my landlord for back utilities and security fees. Etc. <br />
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I already have a headache. Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2896866343594338160.post-85485099812468145072012-10-22T16:28:00.000+09:002012-10-22T16:28:45.558+09:00Job InterviewI had a job interview last Friday. It was a direct result of the job fair I went to at the beginning of the month and it lasted an hour and a half. I think it went well, but I have to wait and see. The company makes patient monitors and systems for hospitals, as well as some security recognition software and systems. It's really interesting. The only problem is that it's on the other side of Seoul so if I get the job (I'll find out this week) I will have to move again.<br />
<br />
If I don't get the job, it's probably back off to the States for me in early December. I have one last thing to do for my current company just after the end of my 90 days in Korea, so I will take another trip to the small Japanese island of Tsushima to get my passport stamped. But that's it. No more of those trips.<br />
<br />
If I get the job, they will give me a visa. The CEO seemed very confident about that. I only wish I shared his confidence.<br />
<a name='more'></a>To be honest, I want both results and neither result at the same time.<br />
<br />
I want to get the job and start anew in another area of Seoul (well, actually I lived there before with my ex-husband but that's beside the point). I don't want to get the job and leave my current place where I can walk to salsa clubs (which I don't actually go to anymore).<br />
<br />
I want to go home and spend Christmas with my family and have everything be familiar and in a language I can understand almost completely. I want to eat American food every day and breathe California air and live where there are no mosquitoes. But I don't want to go back because that's giving up and running away, and I'm so tired of giving up and running away. Plus, healthcare isn't exactly a dream in the US and I need insurance to cover the cost of being bipolar and getting treatment. And I'm scared that I won't get a job in the US either.<br />
<br />
What if I'm unemployable? I have plenty of skills and I learn quickly, so why does nobody want to hire me? In Korea it's the visa. In the US it's that my major and experience are useless (I'm sure). What if I'm destined to go leech off my mother for the rest of her life and try to marry someone I can leech off of when I can't do that anymore? What if I become a cat lady on the street? I'm allergic to cats... that would be a disaster!<br />
<br />
Monday is more than halfway over. I only have 4 and a half days left to wait. Or less. Who knows? It's only my future hanging in the balance.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2896866343594338160.post-26962519125375807102012-10-11T15:35:00.000+09:002012-10-11T15:35:19.076+09:00PsychotherapyI have started psychotherapy and had two sessions so far. I realized that it's very similar to what I do as an English tutor. Basically, the therapist asks a couple key questions here and there to keep me talking. This requires intense concentration and critical thinking on the therapist's part, as every word could contain a hint about what to ask next and what problems there are. In English tutoring, I hang on to every word to try to look for mistakes and chances to teach grammar, vocabulary, or idioms. But I also listen closely so I can ask key questions to keep my students talking. The thing they invariably end up talking about is themselves.<br />
<a name='more'></a>Of course, it's only natural that the thing that's easiest to talk about is ourselves. But at the same time, it's very difficult to talk about ourselves. I've decided that there are two different layers of self-image: the one we think of readily, and the one that takes some prying to get at. For example, my student might tell me that he or she is usually a quiet person (most of them are, which is part of why they seek tutoring for speaking). That's the first layer. But why is he or she a quiet person? Is it because he or she is the middle child in a large family? Is it because his or her parents are quiet and there was never a lot of communication in their house? That's the second layer. It's not very difficult to answer most of those questions when asked, but it is something that we never really think about.<br />
<br />
Let me use myself as another example. I hate children. Why do I hate children? I'm afraid of them. Why? I can't say no or punish them or otherwise keep order. Why not? I'm afraid they won't listen or that they won't like me. Why do I care? I need people to like me and need me. Why? Because if nobody needs me there's no reason for me to stay alive. Look at all those layers. I guess it's more than two. Oh well, I'll still say it's two because it's my blog and I can say what I want.<br />
<br />
In English tutoring, I usually get to hear all about the first layer and sometimes get down into the second layer. I can see the gears turning in their heads as they think about themselves and why they are the way they are. I think this is why I can tutor English despite thoroughly hating teaching. It feels more like I'm a psychotherapist while being a perfectionist about English usage. I can really get close to my students in a way nobody else can because I'm not in their social circle and I'm not even in their language. Just like saying bad words in another language doesn't feel so bad, telling someone intimate details doesn't feel so invasive in another language. Or maybe I'm just a good listener and that's why I get to see the second layer sometimes.<br />
<br />
I'm so used to listening that now that it's my turn to talk, I don't know what to say. Amazing, right? I can spill my heart and thoughts out on the internet for all to see but I can't think of anything when I pay a specialist to listen. I think it is helping, though. I am thinking about thinking about myself. Maybe picking apart my layers and understanding them will help me lead a better life. I hope so, because psychotherapy is expensive.<br />
<br />
In general, <a href="http://www.krisxing.blogspot.sg/2012/07/being-crazy-is-expensive.html" target="_blank">being crazy is expensive</a>. Haha.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2896866343594338160.post-84280100902045087352012-10-05T17:14:00.000+09:002012-10-05T17:14:53.874+09:00CrossroadsThis morning I woke up hungry and realized there was no immediately edible food in my home. So I washed some dishes, made rice in the rice cooker, beat some eggs, made egg fried rice, and sat down to watch CSI: Miami with Korea subtitles on TV. This is my life, I realized as I lay down waiting for the rice cooker to finish the rice. My stomach hurt from walking around and doing things without eating first, and I was miserable because I didn't want to have egg fried rice again. This is my life.<br />
<br />
I know it's only temporary, but it begs the question: what do I want in life?<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
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If this is not the life I want, what is the life I want? And if I ever manage to figure that out, how will I get that life?<br />
<br />
Right now I stand at a crossroads. Tomorrow there is a job fair for people like me: foreigners. Outsiders. If I can get a job that I deem doable and not detrimental to my future career, I will stay in Korea. I will buy some things I need for my apartment for the winter, and I will stay with my boyfriend. If I fail, I will buy a one way plane ticket to the US, and my boyfriend and I will most likely break up when I get on the plane.<br />
<br />
I hate being unsure. I feel like I'm planning two futures. The magic day is November 15th. Should I stay or should I go? It's not my choice. Wish me luck tomorrow. I'll let you know the outcome eventually.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0