i would like to comment a bit on the odd day to day expenses that occur in th is country. now it is very cheap, unreasonably so even, to eat out, buy groceries, cook, find entertainment, see friends, etc., so that in general, one does not actually need to make a lot to live very well. we buy massive bags worth of fresh produce for less than 30rmb, all the groceries we could want for less than 50rmb, plus fruit and freshly prepared cold chinese salads and we’re looking at no more than the equivalent of 20 dollars and we’re set for at least a week. by some estimate, one only needs a quarter of that to live very comfortably in this country. but then, there’s rent.

now maybe i’m unreasonable, but i have a certain standard that i find hard to give up, especially when it concerns the place that i call home, the bathroom that i do my business in, and the kitchen that i prepare meals for the ones i care about in. you can rent a place very cheaply, no more than 30 dollars a month, but it will be underground, is a literal room, have a shared bathroom with no gauranteed hot water, no gaurantee of windows, and definitely okitchen htough you can bring your own electric stove and many people do. that’s the bottom of the pole.

and then there’s the chinese style apartments which are, for most intents and purposes alright, but shoddy, feeling like they’re falling apart, and they are, with no regard for the common spaces of the buildings meaning you can be on the highest floor and all the lights will be out in the hallways so you’ll feel like you’re living in a cave. and the bathrooms, lord save me from the bathrooms. so that’s like, the middle, wh ich, unfortunately, from a standards point of view, i find difficult to accept.

now i realize this might make me seem like a snob or something, but for the same reason that i never understood why people don’t care about the quality of their hotel rooms while on vacation based on the flimsy pretense that they don’t plan to stay in that that often didn’t and doesn’t make sense to me i mean, you need a place to stay right, some place comfortable because what happens if you’re sick or too drunk you don’t want to passout in a trash heap i can’t come to terms with an apartment that i dread the thougt of taking a shower in, which is most chinese apartments. but that makes up the middle tier as far as quality goes.

then there are those places meant for foreigners to stay in, built from the ground up for them, and are of decent quality. noe i say decent only because even they could use a good bit of work. one common complaint is the abundance of mold on the walls of even the most expensive, and i do mean most expensive as these places can run for close to western prices, of places just still feel like they are falling apart, and they are. but, you can find places that will satisfy my standards, but again, they’re expensive.

which brings us to the point that i find myself in an odd employment state. you see, i’m no longer. the foreigner who’s willing to relocate and work in beijing, i’m the foreigner who’s already here and is looking for a job, with the major difference being that while the former has an allure of self sacrifice, and thus the appropriate compensation to go along with what ever jobs may fall under that category, the latter does not, and will pay close to absolutely nothing for work that in any other country will earn me a decent living. bottom line, i can’t make more than 700 dollars a month doing full time programming work in this god forsaken country. now that isn’t actually bad by chinese standards, and were my only goal to pay for our day to day expenses, i’m golden, but i need to pay for rent, and i need a place that i am comfortable taking a shower in, and that’s where the conflict comes into play, namely i for the moment just, can’t.

and the irony of it all, my father just got a new place in beijing and it meets our standards, and is cheaper by far than anything else out there we’ve found, but is in the wrong part of town, and i think that makes all the difference.

but the plan is to continue searching, both for a job and an apartment, and i think we’re going to venture way the far out of town to a place that’s still subway accessible, and easilly accessible might i add, but hopefully very inexpensive by virtue of it being far away, and we might be lucky out there.

let’s see, other problems that plague the sean. he needs to leave again out of the country by july 15 to get on his last entry into the country. and this will be the last one as his visa expires at the end of august, as in proper expires and he will need to go back to the united states to get a new one, which he really does not want to. for reasons beyond his countrol and knowledge and patience to sort through his working visa still hasn’t come through, and neither had maria’s, but she no longer needs to worry because a) she’s going back to the states anyways and b) she will get a student visa through tsinghua. the sean’s plan though is to get on his last entry, as cheaply as possible, then at the last mi nute switch while in country to a 90 day single entry visa, which he knows he can, so he cwn stay in the country until the end of november by which time hopefully some other, better solution would have presented itself. at the moment he doesn’t care which: his father comes throug, he gets employed elsewhere, or he pays somebody 1000 dollars and they give him the visa in that shady, underhanded, sort of grey area kind of way. it really doesn’t matter.

back to i here, i think. i had also planned on joining maria in the states and nyc for her internship this summer, but the feasibility of it is minimal. the expenses unfortunatly just far outweigh the gain, and if i go, i have to plan on staying, which is a decision i’m not yet ready to make. i definitely want to be here when maria starts her school so if i head back to the states it will be after that so no point making the expense now. startup expenses in general back in the states is also just in general prohibitive so even if i wanted to, maybe the best i can do is go back to los angeles which actually doesn’t sound that appealing. i’m kinda holding out that china will still work out in a bit way and we’ll all make our personal fortunes here and change the world for the better.

which at least there’s still a chance of, and having lost most of my steam for blogging, i will end here by saying that no matter what, the sean is trying to be optimistic, and hey, he hadn’t thought of this but maybe he and maria can get married; that’ll solve his visa problems.

oh and the restaurant is a complete bust incidentally. to summarize in the quickest way possible, there’s been management issues from the get go, the owners no longer like each other, for some reason one half viewed my desire to no longer be their full time employee as a sign that they should exit the business as well so they gave my dad some time to find someone to buy them out, and since it obviously didn’t happen fast enough they’ve been threatening to close down the business and then wanted to buy us out which, well, hey, seemed like quite a good deal actually because we were done with the stupid thing anyway and didn’t want to have anything to do with it and if you’ll listen to my father about it, he’s convinced the entire thing was a conspiracy to get the entire business by the other half owners at a greatly depreciated value by driving me out, driving the restaurant down, then lording over us the fact that they have more money to convince us to sell out to them, but things really came to a head when, afraid that they might steal our business licenses my father put up fake copies on the walls and, lo and behold, the next day they were stolen from us, and then when maria and i went to go check our mail because we’re using the restaurant as our mailing address because it’s convenient we find that they had changed the locks on us and were no longer able to get in, and that they had fired all the staff and closed the restaurant without telling us! what is wrong with these people? they were just in the middle of negotiating how to buy our half our when all of a sudden, chaos. so now maria and i have no place to get our mail which is a) a shame and b) just inconvenient as far as timing goes because we’re expecting her all important actual enrollment confirmation packet from tsinghua which should also have the confirmation that the chinese government is going to pay for all her tuition and housing and give her a monthly stipend to live on in. that was sarcastic by the way, though it’ll be cool if it happened that way, but we are actually waiting for this packet and it’s being sent to the restaurant and we’re not sure how to get it anymore because these people are insane!

…

so here’s to hoping it all comes together, heh, and that those we’ve wronged or disappointed in the past may forgive and move forward with us towards a brighter and better future.

Maria has been invited to interview with both BiMBA and Tsinghua! I take this as a very good sign. She’s also basically finished with her Chinese Government scholarship application; those will go out to the States tomorrow. Since she started working on them there have been additions apparently for which she is also qualified so she may compile the necessary documents for those as well. Given our liking of Hong Kong, more on that later, I think she’s also going to apply to CEIBS, an international MBA program based out of Shanghai; much more expensive than the others, much more heavily focused on the finance side of things, much more recognizable to foreigners though less prestigious to the Chinese, but it couldn’t hurt to apply. She is also thinking of going into business with my father, though I think the “thinking of” is a little outdated since my father’s already added her to his business’ website and printed her new business cards for the new company. She is a “General Partner/Legal Associate” for a new portfolio company my father is starting to hold the myriad of other businesses he’s involved with. More details later, or not, if I’m not at liberty to say. All in all though, things sound very exciting for Maria. She’s also going back to the States around the end of April to see her parents, her sister, her nephews, and run her face marathon in Cincinnati, which, sadly, I will miss. But I will be cheering her on from over here, and eagerly awaiting her next marathon in October, the Beijing Marathon.

As far as myself goes, not much has happened. I’ve fully stepped back as full time manager of the restaurant, which is a good thing. When we left for Hong Kong, everything at the restaurant functioned smoothly as far as I’m aware so I’ll take this as a good sign that they don’t need me there every day so I can instead manage from afar and direct through my two supervisors I’ve promoted. Basically, I took one cook and one waitstaff and gave them more responsibility and money so that they can implement my policies and oversee the other employees. I will then direct the overall direction and come up with strategy and have them put them into action. I think this is the best way to handle it. Though I must say the whole process of having David and Yang Zhi exit the business and finding new partners is a total pain in the ass! Remind me never to do business with family. Oh, right, I still am, and am still planning to. Huh. But that brings up the complete and utter mess that is Chinese business bureaucracy. So I have checks that I can write on behalf of the company, and it pulls money out of the company’s bank account. These checks are individually numbered, have a stub, are in triplicate, and when I write one, I need to fill out a special check writing receipt, also in triplicate, fill out a special check writing ledger, and fill out a general money paid out receipt indicating it was by check, also in triplicate, and this receipt I have to fill out whenever I pay money out regardless also. I also have three “stamps” or “seals” or “chops,” each one for a different thing, one of which is used whenever I write a check by the way. The others are used whenever I issue a receipt to a customer, and the last one is whenever the company engages in business with another business through a contract. We’re talking old school, stamp it on a red ink pad first kind of seals, like in the yea olden days. I also have another ledger that I’m supposed to use to indicate money paid in and money paid out every day. I have another ledger that’s for keeping track of money in my bank account, which, by the way, I’ve never had to keep such records by hand ever since I’ve had a bank account, that’s what computers are for right? I will also soon have a specially designed printer that’s meant to only print receipts, and this will cost thousands of RMB and come equipped with a USB dongle that I need to give to the local tax bureau at the end of the month for proper accounting. That’s just a small sliver I’m afraid of the paperwork that now surrounds me.

Also regarding paperwork, our work visas may finally come trough. This last trip to Hong Kong was to get us on our third entry into the country, and this may be the last time we need to do such a thing. The only things missing from the work visa application were some work verification documents I needed and have thus obtained. The entire packet should get submitted relatively soon and with any luck, come this next time when Maria goes home to run and I go home and we go attend Miguel’s wedding, we’ll be coming back on our work visas and won’t have to leave for a year at a time, though of course we can leave if we like for vacations and such.

Hong Kong was great. We wanted to take some more time and actually make this visa trip into a vacation, so we were there for four days and three nights. We found a nice hotel in a nice part of town, though it wasn’t as nice as we thought it would be. First, the beds were hard. It’s my theory that all Asian beds are hard because the Seoul beds were hard, all Chinese beds are hard, and now Hong Kong beds are hard; I think a pattern is emerging. Second, there was no free internet, which is quite inexcusable considering we could get free internet in the subway stations. Third, the power adapter they provided us sucked! I had to jiggle it this way and that before it’ll work and when it did, it needed to be propped so that it wouldn’t wiggle back to a resting position and NOT work anymore. I ended up putting it on top of our suitcase and holding in place with a pair of pants.

Hong Kong was also humid, in March. Wow. I can’t imagine what it must be like over the summer. But it was warm, which was a nice change, but it reinforced my dislike for humidity. I think I just don’t like sweating. The food was very good though, and we took this opportunity to indulge in some good old fashioned Western food which isn’t available in Beijing. First, we gorged on Mexican food. We ordered a bucket (red six) of beers, nachos, chicken wings, a chimichanga, and two enchiladas and were stuffed! Next we gorged on Bubba Gump Shrimp Company. Yes. From the movie. This was on top of the Peak by the way, the highest point in the city with an utterly breathtaking view of the harbor and skyline. Apparently, if we paid 25 HKD more we could have gotten the unobstructed view, but I found it difficult to justify paying money for a view. The ride up to the peak was quite eventful as well: it was a funicular, and at times the grade was over 45 degrees steep.

Hong Kong itself is a city built in levels, with the world’s longest escalator connecting two of them. Lots of fun by the way. It’s very dense, and very tall. It reminded me of LA, San Francisco, and New York, all the cities I love. San Francisco for its hilliness, LA for it’s views of buildings when you’re in the midst of them, and NYC for the sheer verticality and density of it all, plus the mixture of the old and the new living side by side. If you add all these together, you would technically have the perfect place for me to live. It’s even cheaper than those three cities. But it’s humid! And there’s a monsoon season! NYC is also humid, but only for certain, specific, and short times in the year. For instance, NYC is not currently humid. Hong Kong is! All that aside, it was a beautiful place, and we got to hang out with some random Americans I met in my restaurant and struck up an acquaintance with. Very nice people, but very young; I just realized that I’m turning 27 this year, and the guy we went to visit, his younger sister was in town and she is a whole decade younger than I. We also hung out with his girlfriend and their friend from Australia. Good times.

I’ve kind of forgotten what else I wanted to say. I’m hoping to also churn out two more blog entries tonight as part of my writing project. I’m also a little unable to sleep.

So it’s quite late, and I’ve been tossing and turning in bed for a good while now. The issue is that I’ve been all of a sudden sick again, and it’s not been that great of an experience. I really do believe it’s due to the sudden changes in the weather and ambient temperature as opposed to any drastically low temperatures in and of itself; I don’t think my bodies knows what to do when things keep changing! It prepares and is ready for it to be warm or cold, but it can’t handle the shift, and so dies, metaphorically.

The point though, is that while I’ve been sick, I’ve been either not very productive at all, or decently productive on some of my web projects. So assuming I spend half my time productive, half of it not, and a good potion of the rest asleep or in a daze, accounting for time to spend with my Maria of course, I should have time left everyday to blog. Right? So why is it that I don’t, and why is it that it’s been nigh on three weeks since anyone’s updated this blog?

I think it has to do with the actual concept of blogging. Before now, as in, literally a couple of minutes ago, I was suffering quite contentedly in bed, unable to sleep, dreading the possibility that I might be disturbing Maria’s rest as well. And my mind was racing. I was thinking about my restaurant’s website (which isn’t up yet), my art website, which is up here, and some new stuff I’m planning to do for my choir, which, obviously, isn’t up either, neither is the West Campus site. Incidentally, this would be the first time I’m plugging my art website…everyone go and look at it! It represents the “best” of Beijing’s urban youth, or so the propaganda page tells me.

West Campus, incidentally, is a school I’m starting in Beijing! It will at first only offer year long intensive Chinese language and culture courses, hopefully starting Fall 2010, but will move on to offer full study abroad options for a liberal arts education, hopefully with a Fall 2011 availability so we can start searching for partner US institutions. Grandiose, no? They also get a website, one to provide information, brochures, contact information, and a way to register online…hmmm…I wonder if I’ll get paid for any of this web work; they’re all decently complicated…

Um…but yes my mind was racing, and I was even mentally ranting to myself, “hmmmm…this would make a good blog post.” So here I am, finally. Partly also due to he fact that I got tired of lying in bed unable to sleep and I wanted to spec. out the requirements for the IFC website.

So what this post will be about then is just a mish-mash of everything’s that’s been going on, with the hopes that it will make some greater sense, and that it will in some small way make up for the lack of anything interesting floating around here. Ah I’ve also modified the layout a bit to have static headers and footers; I’m not sure I like it…

So I think the restaurant’s a good place to start. We’re switching owners. My aunt and uncle, God bless them, are no longer going to be working with us, thank God. This means that we have to find somebody to buy out their 50% stake in the restaurant for $$$K, plus work out some way to repay the $$$K RMB that they “loaned” to the business to cover operational costs. Without going into too much of the details because I’m not entirely sure I’m at liberty to say at the moment, it’s being worked out, and it should be good.

What I am most excited about is the possibility of greater interactions with a local farm that my father is associated with. This should allow us to get good dairy and meat supplies, plus develop new foods like homemade cheese! I’ve been missing cheese in this country, and I have grandiose dreams of being Beijing’s one and only source for freshly made mozzarella. There is also the possibility that we may partner with another good friend of ours and jointly open yet another restaurant in the same complex as Connections. This will be a all vegetarian restaurant, specializing in fresh juices, fruit and vegetable cocktails, and entree size salads, something wholly lacking in this country. This will also entail greater cooperation with the farm as we will need to grow the entree salad vegetables, things like endive, mescalin, arugula, also things either lacking or inconsistent in this country, and which I will even admit to missing. Again, I have grandiose dreams of being Beijing’s one and only source for fresh, home grown, specialty vegetables.

I am also leaving my role as full time manager of the restaurant, mostly because it’s too time consuming. I have faith and confidence in my staff and the training I’ve provided them, and will still be on hand in a very part time manner, perhaps a couple of hours every other day. I’m going to promote on waitstaff and one cook to be my eyes, hands, and ears while I’m away, and they will be responsible in my absence. We’ve been kind of operating this way for the past week, mostly due to circumstance since I was sick, but also due to premeditation because I was just sick of being there 91 hours a week, and things seem quite smooth. Again, I have faith.

The only other thing interesting about the restaurant is that I think I’ve finalized with my choir, the IFC, the option of using Connections as their “home away from home,” or “home base,” the most pertinent bit of which would be the using of it as their ticket distribution hub. I needn’t tell you all the great benefits this entails. I had always wanted a stronger tie between the restaurant and my choir, and this provides it. Part of the reason why I got a piano for the restaurant was so that there can be impromptu rehearsals, sections, or other music related events, open mics, sing alongs, etc. that can happen at the restaurant and involve the choir. If I can be the one and only place to get tickets for our upcoming concerts, then that’s a step in the right direction. The website I’m spec’ing out for them is to give them the ability to handle online ticket sales on their own without using a third party service that charges an obscene service charge per transaction. Plus, it looks like my Epiphany music center idea may come to fruition at some point relatively soon as well, and all these things will work so well together I just know it.

Which is a great segue for that topic! I got Cary, my father’s business partner, interested in Epiphany. I think he’s always been half way interested, though no one’s taken the initiative to develop it really. My father had done some work, and I’ve built off of that to come to where we are now. Again, without going into too much details because I may not be at liberty to say, but it’ll be good, and it’ll be THE place to go for all your classical music needs in the “heart of Beijing” so to speak, or so the propaganda page states ;)

Also since I am no longer going to be the full time manager at the restaurant, I’m relegated myself to the status of “owner,” which means I get paid when the restaurant is profitable, or if and when that is. This means I’ve been on the prowl for a normal job, hopefully something in a programming vein. I had interviewed with and received a very decent job offer from Pixomondo, a visual effects company opening their Beijing office. Unfortunately, the timing had sucked because I was just getting deep into the running of the restaurant so I turned their offer down. Or more, I didn’t respond when they asked me if they could negotiate my offer with me…my defense on this issue is that I was really busy, as I’ve always been, and it was during New Years so things were extra hectic. But yes, I should have gotten back to them no matter what and it’s my bad for not. The point also being then that I feel awkward approaching them again since I sort of brushed them off earlier. I’ve also interviewed with Wokai.org, a micro-financing company. They’re in first round interviews, and they’re supposed to get back to me. And if any of you reading this know of any good PHP Programmer jobs, let me know! I’ve already been thinking about posting to this blog post photos of my new Connections menu, I think I’ll also post my resume. I NEED A JOB!!! PLEASE HELP!!!

Our visas are also expiring, again. This will be our, what, third entry? Haven’t figured out where to leave to yet, but need to soon, we have just under a week left to clear immigration. Part of the other reason a “normal” job sounds appealing is that they should be able to help me sort out my work visa issue. At the moment, the stand still is that VS Media hasn’t gotten back to me yet on my employment verification letter, which is the last thing I need before one round of work visa applications with my father can be filed. They’ve sort of fallen off the face of the earth at the moment, I wonder if they’re alright…But since I’ve stepped back from the restaurant, this next trip promises to be much better, and longer, and more fun, I promise, my dearest Maria. I know I’ve been sucking lately, being sick, being busy, but I promise better times ahead.

Whoo I’m on a roll aren’t I! And real tag happy :)

Regarding Maria, since a lot I’m not at liberty to myself say, I will say that she did very well on the GMAT, finished her MBA applications to Tsinghua and BiMBA, is plowing her way through her Chinese government scholarships, was NOT late for any scholarships at Tsinghua or BiMBA, and has many promising projects coming up involving Chinese lawyer and my father. And that’s all I’ll say.

Let’s upload that menu now shall we? And don’t laugh at the over the top English; it hasn’t been edited yet.

Let’s also get the resume uploaded shall we? Download now

And now I’m feeling a little dehydrated and shaky. I should probably stop now as I think I’ve got most things covered, and those that I haven’t, I’ll try to list out real quick. I also need to upgrade this WordPress install before I’m finished.

1) We’re still looking for an apartment. We’ve had a reprieve because my mother’s not coming until June, but that’s feeling like it’ll be here real soon. We’re playing around with the option of living in the complex that Connections is in because we have so many things going on there (Connections, Epiphany, the new vegetarian restaurant), plus we also want to start our own business so it seems also appropriate, but there’s a lot of logistics involved with that mostly due to the fact that it’s commercial real estate and so is more expensive and lacking a kitchen and plumbing.
2) My best friend from high school’s wedding is coming up in mid-May, so we’ll be both going back to the US around then. Maria’s going to go earlier, see some family, and run her first marathon in Cincinnati! I will, unfortunately, be unable to attend. But this should mean we’ll have exciting things to look forward to come October and the Beijing marathon :)
3) I only need 40 some odd words to get to 2000 at this point, so I’m just stalling and rambling until then. It seems like a nice, round, number, and may very well be the longest blog post we’ve had. I had been toying with the idea of separating this one entry into multiple entries, and just post them all at the same time. But that also felt stupid. Not that this monster of a post isn’t stupid in and of itself, there’s just no lesser evil with those two choices…

Edit:

Already had to correct a couple of typos, and I just realize I never tested the new sites I’m developing in IE, because I don’t have access to IE anymore! I should get around to that huh…?

But, like the title says, it means we’re off to Seoul, again, tomorrow, for even less time than last; we leave Thursday, come back Friday. The tightness of the travel schedule had originally been to accommodate an activity the IFC was going to participate in. They had been asked to perform on Beijing TV, nationally broadcast no less, but the BTV people wanted a large showing of foreigners, and what with it being the holiday season and all the IFC just couldn’t scrounge up enough singers, though of course I signed up since I have no life and no reason to leave, though I kind of do actually; it’ll be nice to get to go to Bangkok. Either way, they cancelled on me last week, after I’d already gotten our airplane tickets, so what can you do.

Since we’ve been there before though, we’re kind of nixing the whole “tourist in Korea” thing and opted to stay in a hotel real close to the airport and will just camp there. It should be fine; Maria managed to find a very nice looking place for a good price. Hopefully we won’t have to run this whole gamut again, and the only thing we’ll have to do is leave the country so we can enter on our working visas. Though that in and of itself may be difficult as the process seems to be, as mentioned before, much more difficult than before, and we will most likely need to return to the States of all places to get it.

So it used to be easy, very easy. There’s a whole long list of things you need to apply for one, ranging from a translated resume, a translated offer letter, and the offer letter needs to be for a “fancy” position signed by a “fancy” executive of the company inviting you. Oh, your resume needs to be “fancy” too so it seems justified that your skills are needed. All these things in the past used to just be for show but apparently someone actually looks at it nowadays. They want our ORIGINAL college degrees (pain in the ass), and they need actual signed work verification letters from EVERY employer on your resume. Can’t be emailed, can’t be faxed, can’t be copied; needs to be the actual damned thing. So we’re left in the position where ok, I’ve a lot of employers on my resume so that it can be “fancy,” but I don’t want to track down all of them and ask them for this silly work verification letter. Sigh. On top of all this there’s a health inspection that we needed to have done, and have; thankfully that was relatively painless, and it’s convenient to know we’re healthy, though it was expensive for just a sheet of paper. And they really go over board with the health inspection! They took lots of blood, did an EKG, did an ultrasound, took an x-ray, checked your hearing, vision, general physical health. Sigh, again. It’s in process is the point. A long process.

Ugh and it’s gonna be so expensive to have to leave the country this many times! There’s Miguel’s wedding, there’s Kelly’s wedding, and some time between the two there’s the last time we have to leave the country back to the States to get our working visas. It’s actually I just don’t want to go to the States heh. And I’m sick again damnit. This city has been very cold lately, so business also sucks. Heh and I haven’t had time to blog so I’m doing it now.

Business is actually alright. It’s surprising but for a restaurant in China to be profitable it just needs to make 1500RMB a day. That’s just over 200$. It sounds small, but when you’re only charging 30RMB per dish, you’d need to serve 50 people at least, per day, which given how cold it is, is no mean feat. Ah either way.

1) Everything’s expensive there, basically the same price as in the US, but in won, which makes everything looks horribly expensive because it’s just about 1,000 times more worthless than the dollar. So a can of pop will set you back 1,000 won…

2) Hotels, transportation, entrance fares, etc., i guess this means durable goods and services, cost the same as the US. Our hotel was 135,000 won a night and it wasn’t that good. Food’s thankfully cheaper, especially the good Korean food, with lots of yummy sides!

3) It is quite a short flight from China, so if you really need to sort out your tourist visa and get in on your next entry, it’s not a bad choice, though, as mentioned, expensive. It only takes like two hours, and there’s good public transportation from the Seoul airport. But it’s far! ICN, the new one, the only international one, is 75 km away from Seoul. It takes an hour and a half by public transportation bus, probably longer by subway (we didn’t want to try it), and supposedly an hour by taxi, but that’ll set you back 100,000 won, or 100 dollars.

4) Do take the subway to try to get around. The maps are convoluted, they actually try to draw the lines to scale and have every little turn show up, but they go everywhere, are quick, inexpensive, and relatively frequent, though not as frequent as Beijing’s. Seriously, the maps suck; they’re dense, they’re angular, and one map doesn’t look the same as the next so there’s no consistency and where a station was on one isn’t where it is on another. It’s just all wrong. And the colors all look the same to me…

Seoul Subway map v1 of infinity

Seoul Subway map v2 of infinity

Otherwise the subways are more than sufficient as a means of getting around; certainly better than LA’s ;)

5) They do all sort of speak English, sorta, kinda, not really. I’ve never been comfortable with the idea of going to an Asian country that I don’t speak the language in, this is why. It’s like, there’s lots of good looking street food, but I can’t ask if it’s vegetarian for Maria to eat. The good news is that the language is not tonal like Chinese, so you can read and pronounce it as it looks when written in English. The written language also looks pretty good; I think Maria and I had figured out some of the underlying patterns by the time we left.

6) We were able to get street food though, and very good ones: baked goods shaped like a fish with sweet red bean paste in it. The lady was making them on this huge, rotating waffle iron type machine with fish molds on it. We had been walking around for a while that night actually, looking for street food, unwilling and not ready to call it a night without more dessert.

7) In China, anyone staying the night has to register within 24 hours with the local police department; tell them you’re here, where you’re staying, give them a photo, etc. These usually last for as long as your visa allows you to stay in the country. So like good little foreigners, we had registered immediately when we first got there, and like good little foreigners, we had left the country before both our visa and police registration had expired. We assumed that this meant we had some leeway on the whole “24 hours, must be registered” thing, because technically our previous registration hadn’t expired. NOT TRUE! Apparently, it’s whenever you enter the country, you have 24 hours to present yourself to the local police department. Not that anyone gave us trouble with it since we were a full day late, but, well, I can see problems arising.

8) As far as personal updates go:

a) My IFC concert has been postponed due to difficulties in getting the required government approval to sing Handle’s Messiah
b) Renovations at my apartment may finally finish, next week; there’s light at the end of that tunnel
c) I’m not sure I want to work for my father anymore…but that’s a much more complicated matter that I’m not sure I want to touch upon here
d) My great uncle passed away Monday morning. He’s the first of my relatives to pass away for me, and the first funeral that I will be attending this coming Sunday morning
e) As great as this apartment is that I’m staying in, I’m not sure I want to any more either, considering that at some point my mother and her entire family will show up, and most likely for a lengthy period of time.
f) I am still sick. Blah.

We were originally supposed to have switched to working visas (“Z”) by now already, but somewhere along the processing line, the ball was dropped and we’ll have to start that process over. Once that’s done though, we should be able to stay in the country for a year at a time, maybe even two depending on how we do the renewal. But that will have to wait.

We were going to try to extend our tourist visas. The longest you can stay in the country on one of those is 90 days, and we’ve only been here for 60. I went down to the local visa issuing bureau, another one of those monolithic buildings in architectural praise of the all mighty power of bureaucracy, and, if I gave them a good reason why I wanted to stay, they’d let me, for another 30 days. The problem with extending it though is that it will void my current multiple entry visa. I think something along the lines of you’re only allowed to hold one visa into the country at a time, and the extension will count as a brand new 30 day tourist visa. Now we don’t want to lose our multiple entries, because it’s convenient. Plus, on top of voiding our current visas, we need to have a domestic bank account, in our name, with $3000.00 on deposit, each. Granted we need domestic bank accounts in our name anyways, but there’s just not enough time to process all of this! And I have to wonder, what tourist would have a local bank account, in their name, and that much cash when you can just use any ATM to get money from your US accounts?

The other option was to get an “F” visa, which is for foreigners coming with intent to find a job, which lasts for six months. That’s its own bureaucratic nightmare, needing certified letters of invitation from a company, etc. The grand plan had been to take a 24 hour train down to Hong Kong, which counts as leaving the country for some reason, trying to apply and get an “F” visa while there, and failing that, just come back into the country on our next “L” visa entry.

Then we were thinking of flying down, because we don’t have enough time to devote 48 hours to travel.

Then the “F” visa option was starting to sound stupid and not worth it, and my father assures me he’ll have our “Z” visas squared away as soon as possible.

So now, we’re going to Korea! Woot? I’ve never been there, never had any plans to go there, know nothing about how to get there, what to do when we’re there, etc. But we did get a really good price on the airplane tickets. Unfortunately we were unable to book a flight there and back on the same day (it’s only a two hour flight to Seoul) due to the last minute nature of our booking. So we get two days and two nights in Korea. Again, woot?

To sum up then:
“F” visa: stupid.
“Z” visa: get it ASAP!
“L” visa: multiple entries, good, losing said multiple entries for an extension, bad.

It’s my fault, really. I should have been better on top of what was going on with our working visa process. Ah well. It’s actually a horrible time for me to be leaving the country right now. My restaurant’s renovation is nearing completion, so is my apartment’s, hopefully, I have two concerts to give within the next two weeks, and it’s my birthday. Ah well. It’ll be sorted. At least it’ll be a mini-adventure to Korea!

Edit: apparently Obama’s also visiting Seoul…….??????