Today I got up at the crack (not really, but it felt like it), using an arsenal of awakening equipment including a downloaded alarm clock (featuring the sound of a bird singing and then being shot, the software also instantly sends you a bunch of newspapers and comic strips made to order (Google: Wake Up News)). My Polar also chirruped me awake on schedule and Corneli called. After all this and more to wake me up, I really wanted to go back to sleep. I'd spent a few extra hours researching the Visa Run to Osaka, Japan, and believe it or not, the website I made free for all www.fishforfish.blogspot.com, and getting emails to everyone with descriptions took several hours.
See, the director handed me my air ticket to Japan as I was walking out of the school at 8:31 pm yesterday. Not much time to get ready for a trip the next morning.
On the 3300 bus from just outside Madu Subway Station(In Ilsan) I sat next to an air hostess. We were both nodding off, but between nods I asked her where she was going and she said Chicago, a 13 hour flight.
I wandered into the airport, absently filling in my departure card and headed for the 'No Baggage' checkin of Korea Air. The pregnant Korean lady (and I think the women beside her was too, maybe they all were) was about to sort me out when she asked if I had a VISA for Japan? I continued filling in my departure card, and said, "I don't need a VISA for Japan." A few calls, a few cautious looks, and she sent me to E21, where a gentleman did the same thing. I opened my Lonely Planet and showed him a piece I had circled:
Tourists and business visitors of many nationalities are not required to obtain a visa...
Here are the facts:
If you are from America, do you need a Visa? No.
If you are from Canada, do you need a Visa? No.
If you are from the United Kingdom, do you need a Visa? No.
If you're from any of the other English speaking countries like New Zealand or Australia do you need a Visa? No
What if you're from a beautiful faraway country that sounds a lot like South Korea, but is called South Africa, one of the 6 English Speaking countries where teachers are recruited to teach in Korea, do you need a Visa? You need a VISA. And it's not just you. Bangladesh as well.
Ok great.
Since I was sleep deprived and the process of turning me around was...well...a process, I found myself back on the bus, headed back to the murk, feeling crappy but not foul.
I arrived home (while my more efficient and more organised ghost was winging his way over the island of Jeju-Do towards Osaka), bleeped off three, no four phone calls. First to the Japanese Embassy: Gist: Get here before we have lunch at 11:30 (Time now, 10:35)
Second call: Sumin, for Jane's number. Then Sey, for Jane's number. Then Jane, explaining that the director must cancel or change my ticket and that I'm heading into Seoul now bye.
Caught the 1000 bus into Seoul and with Fransa next to me, felt a bit better. We cracked a few jokes while the bus driver tried to throw us against the windows by making violent left and right turns.
Got to Gwanghwamun and then skipped towards the American Embassy and eventually found the Japanese Embassy hiding behind it in a fairly nondescript but tall beige building.
We walked by lots of riot police and finally got through the elevators and to the 7th floor. The clock was on exactly 11:40am. The security guard showed us back to the elevators, pointing to the sign, and said we could come back at 1:30 pm.
To punish myself even more, we grabbed Burger Kings. I tried to recall how come I'd forgotten about the Visa when there is another Japanese Visa from my first Visa run, in February of 2002. My school had done it all for me, that's why. I still remember the panic of being on my last legal day in Korea then, and without a passport at the airport, and mercifully they arrived with my passport and the Visa in it.
Browsed through the volumes of books at Kyobo and bought 3 books (W70 000 ouch). I think it was comfort buying or something. Unusually, I bought 2 books on teaching English. One is about teaching English to kids, and the other is about the business of it. The third book I picked up alongside The Power Of Now, and based on this context, felt it was worth a read, particularly since The Power of Now is probably the best book and most powerful I've ever read.
I wanted to buy quite a few books, including Michael Crichton's State of Fear (I think about a pandemic disease ravaging the planet), but that particularly book was only in a large print version, and for W30 000.
Headed back to the Embassy and filled in forms and then had to head out for photos. The little shop around the corner of the building sold pictures for W15 000 (3 times the average price), so I walked back to the subway station and took pictures there. I needed 5xW1000 notes. I smiled excessively into the camera, like someone who is really trying to appear calm and happy in what is turning out to be a slightly harrowing, annoying day.
Headed back and competed with a guy from Bangladesh who is in import export ('Business is bad these days, there was lots of money in it, but not any more. I import foods into Korea, export accessories. Like cellphones yes.') - competed with him for the foreigner terminal.
I absently told the lady that I had gone to the airport with a ticket in hand and now I was standing here. I asked her pointedly, "Why do South Africans need a Visa, but none of the other English speaking countries do?" She said, in a slightly Korean accent, "Because you're all racist pigs, and we're trying to make life as difficult for you as possible, so you leave Korea and never come back."
Taken aback, I managed a barely audible: "Really?"
"Yes really, and we're especially making it harder for balder older men like you."
I blinked. "Excuse me?"
"What happened to your passport," the real woman appeared through the haze of my imaginings. She prodded the pages that had been through the washing machine once. Some of the airport stamps had washed out, and I appeared to have a cracked a wrinkly face.
She said she'd accept the passport, grant me a Visa, and could I pick it up on Monday. I'm pretty sure I didn't imagine her saying that. I asked if she could possibly manage today, as my Visa for Korea expires on Wednesday 22, and my director might have booked me on another flight on Monday.
She graciously acquiesced and a few minutes later I was walking the streets of Korea, with a Visa for Japan, so I could get my Visa for to get back into Korea. Isn't the world a wonderful, sensible place!
Despite the schlepp (really the perfect world for today's rigmarole), Fransa and I had a nice time together, making light of everything and just laughing a lot. I also had a chance to show her a bit more of my Seoul.
Once back in Ilsan I grabbed an hours sleep, then called the school. The director apparently didn't believe what I was saying, or had been doing. When I spoke to him directly he seemed to think I was in Japan. Seems he hadn't got the message to cancel or transfer the ticket.
He asked me to call him at 8pm so he can fire me.
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