OK, I’ll help start you off.
“Shame about that Michael Vick, ain’t it?”
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Marmot’s Open Thread #17
This entry was written by Robert Koehler, posted on August 25, 2007 at 11:51 am, filed under Blogging. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.
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36 Comments
First!
Check out the North Korean roller coaster vid I made after my trip there:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ze1_D1F5NjI
Welcome home, Batts.
Sit down. Have a drink.
Give them all a drink.
And give those Irish hoodlums a drink.
There’s only one Irishman here.
It’s a celebration.
- Top of the morning.
- It’s good to be home.
This is my friend Jimmy.
Henry. It’s his joint. This is Lisa.
Tommy. All dressed up.
All grown up and doing the town.
Forgot you were having a party for him.
Come here.
I’ll say hello. How are you Billy?
I haven’t seen you in years.
Jesus Christ Almighty.
You look terrific.
Watch the suit.
You little prick.
I know you all my life.
- Don’t get too big on me.
- Just don’t bust my balls.
If I was gonna bust your balls,
I’d say, “Go get your shine box.”
This kid was great.
“Spitshine Tommy.”
He’d make your shoes look like
fucking mirrors. Excuse my language.
He was the best. Made a lot of money.
No more shines.
No more shines.
You been away a long time.
They didn’t tell you.
I don’t shine shoes anymore.
What’s got into you? I’m breaking
your balls a little, that’s all.
I’m only kidding with you.
You don’t sound like it.
There’s people around.
I’m kidding. We’re having a party.
I haven’t seen you in a long
time and you get fresh.
I don’t mean to offend you.
I’m sorry, too.
Now go home and get your shine box.
Motherfucking mutt!
You fucking piece of shit!
Come on, come on!
He bought his fucking button!
That fake old tough guy.
You bought your fucking button!
Don’t get nervous.
Keep that motherfucker here!
Keep him here!
You fucking feel strong?
Sorry. Tommy’s loaded.
He doesn’t mean any disrespect.
No disrespect? Are you nuts?
Teach this kid some manners.
What’s right is right.
- You understand?
- It’s okay.
We’re hugging and kissing over
here and then he acts like a jerk.
You insulted him a little bit.
- I didn’t.
- You insulted him a little.
I didn’t. Give us a drink.
Drinks on the house.
No, have the drink with me.
The drinks are on the house.
Yeah, they both ended up getting whacked for that.
I’ve gotta question. What exactly are the benefits of having an F-2 visa? They won’t give me one but I’m just wondering why I’m trying so hard to get one? As far as I can see the only benefit it would bring is if I lived off my wife, didn’t work, then I wouldn’t have to worry about getting deported. Since we need my income to survive that’s not a viable option. It looks like, in order to stay legal, I would still have to obtain an E-2 visa to work. Why bother?
They say I need 30 mil in the bank and 30 mil in key-money in a house so I’m not paying rent. There are plenty of examples of them dishing out the F-2’s without these requisites but there are some other examples, like myself, who have to ante up. It seems as though marrying a Korean citizen, in my case, hasn’t changed and has no chance of changing my status whatsoever.
I don’t believe it is arbitrary. I think, in my case, it’s because my wife is Mongolian-Korean. Maybe I’m wrong. Perhaps it’s just the particular immigration officer I dealt with.
Am I wrong? Are there entitlements that come with an F-2 that I’m not aware of? Is there anything that I can do to change my status?
Leave Korea…?
That’s what I did…
Nah, I’m happy here. My wife’s happy here. My daughter is really happy here. My cat seems ok with it.
Besides, the opportunities for a graduate from San Diego State Community College in the States are limited.
I’m just wondering, that’s all. If there’s nothing I can do there’s nothing I can do. I’ll continue to go from annual job to annual job and make my yearly pilgrimage to Fukuoka. Hell, the money I save on not having a car alone makes it worthwhile.
As long as taxi fares don’t get more expensive…
What ever happened to the TV’s here which used to be able to switch off dubbing, and listen to the English, instead of the Korean dubbed version? In Taiwan, Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore, they all still have this so you can listen to the audio of your choice, but here you’re stuck only to hear the Korean audio.
Why doesn’t Skylife or any of the other cable companies, or TV’s for that matter, have that option anymore?
Law school sucks. I miss Korea.
No, I don’t need taxis either.
I’m just wondering about their motivation on this. Exactly how extreme is their investment in me in granting me this visa. Like I said, I don’t see much benefit.
And nobody has written about the new Hooters opening near Kangnam station?
US News and World Report’s latest college ranking are out.
The most overrated on the top 25 list: (#12)WashU, (#25)UCLA
Some schools that should have ranked higher: MIT, G’town, and Harvard
See the list here:
http://colleges.usnews.ranking....._brief.php
Jimmy Conway never got whacked.
It’s the immigration officer… He’s (she’s?) being an asshole. I got an F-2 visa easily and without such things — immigration offices seem to apply the law fairly unevenly. I think I had to provide some proof that I wasn’t an indigent who was just going to end up collecting welfare (yeah, I know… it’s non-existent), but I know that I didn’t have any 30 million won lying around. You might try going to a different immigration office or else talking to a different immigration officer in the same office, if you don’t have the luxury of going elsewhere. As for the benefits… Well, it tends to be a lot easier to change your visa status and change jobs when you have an F-visa rather than an E-visa… Especially since you basically just need an endorsement rather than a whole new visa. I think even with an E-visa, you can still change jobs without visiting Japan, as long as you don’t overstay on your original visa. You might need to get a release letter, too… I’m a bit fuzzy on the details anymore. But hey, if your jobs pay for you to go to Japan, and you don’t mind the night of binge drinking that usually entails (you can get the visa in one day and get out, but what fun is that?), why stop doing it?
Well, you get to save passport pages by not getting those huge E-2 stamps… But again, I think that you can just renew an E-2 when you change jobs nowadays. You also get to feel vaguely superior to E-visa holders because having an F-visa means that you’re one step closer to the door to the club you’ll never be admitted to — you can at least consider yourself ‘Korean’… Oh! And you can also rest secure in the knowledge that if you ever lose your job and can’t get a new one (like if all the hagwons in Korea simultaneously and spontaneously imploded), it’s quite a bit easier to teach (ahem) ‘under the board’ if you don’t have to step out of the country every time your tourist visa lapses.
Maddlew, with the F-2 your wife - not your boss - becomes your sponsor, which depending on how you look at it, could be a good or bad thing. (Would you rather your boss or your wife coming down to the police station at 5:00 AM?) There is more freedom to do work on the side, and has been pointed out, you don’t have to do visa runs anymore. (Which, I sometimes miss doing. Are the Broadway and Happy Cock still in business around Tenjin Station in Fukuoka?)
It sounds to me like you could be getting jerked around by Immigration, but your wife being a Mongolian-Korean may be an issue for them too. (If the actual criteria for the F-2 really exist, the application is inconsistent.) If you have long-term plans here, do what you can to get an F-2, if it means going to another officer, wiring some money into your bank account for a few days, whatever. With a wife and kid, I think you’d be best off trying to eliminate any possibility of getting - in the worst case - an exit order for some kind of irregularity/legal problem. Not a likely scenario, but possible. Having an F-2 visa would give you and your family additional security/stability.
#7. My cable company did away with the switched dubbing option about a year ago. Also I’ve lost a few English channels (Star World, Star Sports, BBC) in favor of more Korean shopping and religious channels. WTF????
With over 1 million foreigners in Korea now, you’d think they’d be expanding their English cable options instead of scaling them back. Other countries in the area, namely Japan, Thailand and the Philippines (Filipino/Tagalog is their official language BTW) have much better cable TV options for the foreign community.
When will adeshi realize he can make an excellent foreign language cable TV package and rip-off all the Barbarians?
Is anyone else picking up on the racist netizen responses to the Hongdae-ap murder-kidnapping? The two women went to Hongdae-ap, ergo they were looking for foreigners, ergo they had it coming. Not that anyone suspects foreigners of having pulled off the crime, but still, pretty nauseating.
#11:
I recall reading in the news awhile back that a number of colleges and universities were threatening non-cooperation with the US News and World Report Annual Rankings, citing bias and inaccuracies in the criteria used in the rankings.
#15 Skylife did that years ago when they came out. They had AFKN for awhile, but when they got word of that they (the armed forces network) cancelled that quick. Skylife’s promise was to “replace it with a channel of equal programming”. It was replaced with the fishing channel.
A total lunar eclipse will be visible from Japan on Tuesday. Does anyone know if we can see it from Korea as well?
Yeah, but Tommy DeVito, (Joe Pescci), and Billy Batts both die over this. All over some comments about shining shoes. Quite a startling movie. No, Robert DeNiro doesn’t get whacked.
Thanks for the feedback on the F-2. I’ve been looking at some discussions on some other sites and people seem to be under the mistaken impression that it gives you carte blanche to work as many jobs, including private lessons, as you want. I believe it specifies that this is not the case. The official website says you need the appropriate visas in addition to the F-2 for any employment. Perhaps the government believes that if you aren’t well off you’ll be more tempted to engage in illegal work.
Another point you brought up, Zonath, was people leeching off the system. It makes some sense. Such as the Korean welfare system is, it’s certainly better than some other third world countries. Are there unemployment benefits here?
Thanks for the advice! I’ll keep trying.
When are DVDs projected to be phased out?
Right, I guess in general they were both “whacked”, but I’m not sure if the murder of Batts would be considered “whacked” in the wiseguy world. I guess we’d have to ask some real mafia folk. Can any of the Italian-American mobsters on this blog clear that up?
Maddlew, the former F-2-1 is no more. It is just an F-2. There is no more spousal visa plus work visa. This means that you do not even have to go to Immigration with your contract from your employer. Your wife is your sponsor. Period. You don’t even have to bring your contract - renewed contract or contract at a new school - to your local Immigration office. (Sort of similar to the F-4 visa holders.) Same goes with taking a break and studying Korean full-time, for example - no extra visa required.
Your primary employer may ask you to sign a contract that states you will not work elsewhere without permission, but it isn’t an Immigration issue. (And, to be realistic, there is little chance of them knowing about you working at some company halfway across the city twice a week.) I’ve done a couple of university camps outside of the one I work at, and it was no problem. (As a professional courtesy the camp school director wanted to get an OK from my director - which I can understand - but there appeared to be no real paperwork and Immigration never became involved.)
Technically, you are supposed to report register as a tutor or maybe pay taxes on company classes (though some agencies deduct a small amount, supposedly for this purpose), but almost nobody does. (It doesn’t seem to me like the Ministry of Justice - Immigration’s parent ministry - has a close relationship with the tax officials anyway.) In the unlikely event you were to have a problem, I think as an F-2 holder you might get off with a warning or fine. With an E-2, you could find yourself kicked out a lot easier.
Keep on trying and good luck.
Regarding visa runs. I had to go to Japan I think only a couple of times, in the mid 1990s to renew my yearly visa. From 1998 to 2004, I never had to exit the country for renewal, even when I changed employers, and later visa status [E-7 to D-8]. Of course my employers were using lawyers to handle the visa applications, so it was damn easier.
Still hard, of course — just invisibly hard. The law firm’s staff, however, undoubtedly had to eat the shit sandwich at Immigration, and deal with all the Mickey-Mouse inconsistencies that follow from minor Korean officials’ propensity to make up “the rules” as they go along.
Immigration is the practice area I find most burdensome. The work is perceived to be clerical in nature, and it undoubtedly is, but the fact that “the rules” are mostly unwritten and seem to be materially different for each and every case is aggravating.
Oh sure. I meant easier for *me*…
I know that my lawyer had a team of clerks to “manage” the Immigration officers. I’d say the hardest, on my side, was to sign the bill. After all, this particular lawyer works for a very very famous firm, famous, among others, for its sizable bills…
Then again, I think the Immigration officers tend to be more reasonable with very large law firms. After all, they know which side their bread is buttered on…
Wow! Thanks everyone. It sounds like despite the personal varying gradients of difficulty, it is in fact worth while. I will get it one way or another. I just wasn’t aware of the benefits. Sounds worthwhile.
Muchisimas gracias!
#22
And tell us what happened to Jimmy Hoffa — Senior, ‘cuz we know where Junior is.
Not that I’ve ever heard of — and certainly not for foreigners… That’s pretty much what the severance pay system is supposed to take care of, despite being a piss-poor substitute with far too many loopholes. But hey, at least taxes are hella low. I’ve also never heard of any actual welfare system in South Korea — does one really exist? I’m not entirely sure that there is a system to leech off of.
There is something for people who’ve lost their job — my wife used it once, but it was limited in time, like three months or so, and she didn’t get much money [it was based on the official salary, which, in many Korean SMEs is way smaller than the real one, so that everybody pays less tax]. Besides, my wife was running stir crazy after a month anyway
Here’s more information on 실업수당:
(1)구직급여의 수준: 실직전 급여기초임금일액의 50%를 지급하며 여기서 급여기초임금일액이란 이직일을 기준으로 산정한 평균임금을 의미합니다. 즉 평균임금의 50%를 지급하며 급여기초임금일액의 최고·최저기준을 정해놓고 1일평균임금이 7만원이상이면 7만원(따라서 구직급여 최고액은 1일 35,000원임)으로 실업자의 임금이 최저임금에 미달하면 최저임금을 적용합니다.
(2)지급기간: 피보험기간 및 이직시의 연령에 따라 60일∼210일간 지급합니다. 피보험기간 1년이상∼ 3년이상∼ 5년이상∼ 10년이상
연령 3년미만 5년미만 10년미만
————————————–
25세미만 60일 60일 90일 120일
25세∼30세 60일 90일 120일 150일
30세∼50세 90일 120일 150일 180일
50세이상 및 120일 150일 180일 210일
So at best you get 50% of your former salary for 7 months… Not much indeed.
The severance pay is not intended to cover for job loss, rather it’s one of the two retirement pension schemes, along with the National Pension Fund, which many foreigners — many at least in number of nationalities — are not eligible to. For instance, people from countries that pay a salary-like amount every month until the recipient dies, and sometimes half that amount to the spouse after the recipient’s death [that'd be my parents' case], which is quite more generous than Korea’s scheme, are not eligible. So all the money I contributed 172,000 krw every month for many years, is lost… When I compare this with HK, I realize Korea has still a long way to go…
I don’t care if sport athletes are targeted by police in criminal activities (whether that’s what happened or not), especially football ones who have ties with Georgia.
Vick memorables used in creative ways…
http://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/ne.....;type=lgns
I wonder if Vick (Virgina Tech. grad.) is a swell fella of Herschel Walkers (University of Georgia grad)?
Herschel Walker once lived across from me in an apartment (Irving TX). I shouldn’t say lived because the place was really used his love shack. He once brought his child/baby there with his lover (he is/was a married man at the time) and I took a picture of him. He saw the flash through the window and he started beating on my door. He then called the police as he had friends working at the cop shop.
I called my buddies and he started in on us from my 1st lever porch. He challenged the 3 of us to go to his health club and fight.
I wrote the TV show ‘Pardon the Interruption’ on ESPN (they didn’t respond), but Herschel Walker moved soon after. I’m sure ESPN tipped him of my writing. I think my writing went something like… How can Herschel Walker claim he is a holy man (I think he speaks/spoke/preaches/preached at a Baptist church) while frolicking with a gal (white with fake tits) while married?
Herschel Walker has/had a ‘W’ shaped house living next to none other than Dr. Phil.
Also appreciate the information regarding the F 2 visa.
“I think that you can just renew an E-2 when you change jobs nowadays.”
This is only true if you work for a city or federal government, such as public school or City Hall. Otherwise, you still have to leave the country to obtain a new E visa.
I am a living testimony to the contrary — albeit with help from lawyers. But still, it *is* possible…
There will be a full lunar eclipse visible in the Seoul area Tuesday night. Meaning, if it is not cloudy, you can see the moon turn blood red for a while. Convince your friends you have demonic powers!
Binoculars pic of last lunar eclipse as seen from Seoul, 2004:
https://www.space.com/imageoftheday/image_of_day_040511.html
The eclipse will actually begin before Moonrise in the Seoul area.
Moonrise: 7:05 pm Seoul time - eclipse approaching peak
7:22 pm : peak of lunar eclipse
9:36 pm : end of lunar eclipse.
Binoculars are recommended if you have ‘em. Let’s hope for a cloudless sky…
They changed the F2 visa requirements a couple of years ago (Sept 2005) so that you no longer had to obtain an additional E2 visa to work. Now you can pretty much work where ever you want whenever you want. You don’t even have to sign a contract if you don’t want to, although with some places, especially hagwons, you may want to just to protect yourself if there are any disputes. Essentially, with an F2 visa you have all the rights of a Korean. If you live here for more than 2 years, you can now apply for F5 visa which, after 3 years of residency, according to the documentation I found out the Immigration website, allows you to even vote for government officials.
For way more information than I can type here, go to http://www.immigration.go.kr/indeximmeng.html
Along the top, click on “information” and then “publications” and then download the PDF document “Guidebook for Foreign Spouses of Korean Nationals”. The English portion of the guide starts on page 61. Information on the F5 visa can be found on page 75 of the guide.