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I’m taking a week off from self-imposed work obligations. Well, that’s not completely accurate. My interest has changed momentarily and I’m riding with that wave. The Olympics are on TV, like 24 hours a day, between the US, Korean, and Japanese broadcasts. I’m just diggin’ all that. I’m an Olympics junkie. I’ll watch any event, but I prefer the ones that one can usually only view during the Olympics, like luge or ski jump. I’m in the same time zone as Nagano, so the Japanese broadcast is the best since it’s pretty much continuous and always live. They never cut to commercial, so there is never the annoying American announcer bantering about other events, or the intrusive ads. You even get to see them doing things like repairing the ice after somebody falls, or waiting around for the snow to let up. It’s cool. Plus, everything is in Japanese, which is nice on the ears after all the Korean I don’t understand and all the English that I do understand but sometimes wish I didn’t have to hear.
This means that instead of reading I’ll be doing more stuff that I can perform with one eye glued to the tube. Like, finally, I’m interested in finishing that book I’m making. Finally! I was thinking I’d given up on that project. I got letters to write and pictures to write the dates on. It frees up the computer for Dave, which lessens that nightly conflict.
Well, I started out industrious but then my mood changed and it all peetered. I went to go to some sign-ups for classes sponsored by the Seoul International Women’s Association (SIWA). The classes are usually too expensive and so I just avoid the thing, but this time I really wanted to take a class on Korean traditional tea ceremony. I left here early, rode the train 40 minutes or so. Paid 10,000w ($6.25) just to get into the sign-up area only to find that the woman teaching the one and only class I wanted to take didn’t even show up! That’s $6.25 wasted. I left there pissed off, got some groceries, and came home to veg.
Man, I’m drawing a total blank here. Can’t think of a damn thing to say. On the train I had a cool thought that I promised myself I would remember, but now it’s gone.
I guess I’m feeling a little numb by this point in the evening. I wrote several emails to family folks pounding them with my concerns about G-ma’s moving. I keep coming up with suggestions for G-ma, but she’s shooting them down. I even talked about it with my friend Catherine today who was completely and totally supportive which helped me not feel like the nut I usually feel like in the midst of family. Dave’s mom called yesterday and she was way supportive too. So, now I’m feeling like I’m throwing snowballs of concern to the brick wall that is my family’s way of coping and you know it’s just futile and I’m just accepting that because at some point I figure that while all this crap affects me, it’s ultimately not my life and not my regret to live if decisions are being made are not as carefully thought out as I think they should be. You know??? G-ma chooses her own destiny, has been for literally decades, and while those choices have, in the past, left demons to chase me, ultimately she will have to answer most for the decisions she makes. Meanwhile, I got my own life to keep on track. Tough to care but have so much anger.
Which makes me wanna be violent toward something. Someone should really study violence and anger. I’m sure someone has, but usually when I read about violence, I read about its correlation with power. Maybe that’s just the feminist viewpoint?
Anyway, Dave’s company is really jerking him around again and I’m powerless to do anything. I wish his boss severe harm, something that would be a specialized torture for him. I don’t like feeling that kind of hate toward people. But you know, this guy really abuses Dave and Dave is like so powerless to do anything about it except for quitting and that kind of maneuver takes on a whole new dimension when you live overseas. What’s that? Is that a little voice in the distance asking if there is some sort of ombudsman he can appeal to at his company? How about this: The President of HR casually asked Dave how he was faring in Korea. Dave was candid with her. Next thing you know, the President directly above Dave and Dave’s current boss called him into some kind of weird shit session where they repeated what he told the HR President and basically told him to shut up or get fired. So, see, you can’t trust anyone.
Just one more year…. Except now the deal is they’re trying to tell him he can’t leave Korea even though his contract is up in one year. Bastards.
Basically, I’m so sick and tired of big corporations and how the masses just let them have their way. I asked Dave why there were no white collar labor unions. He scoffed and said it would never happen. But why not? I figure it’s a class thing. People in white collar jobs think they’re somehow better than the blue collar people - that they have more choice and don’t have to organize to beat the corporation - in fact, white collar folks want acceptance into the corporation because that indicates status. But white collar people get dicked around all the time and the only recourse they really have is to leave. But leaving is not always the best thing. I mean, it often means a cut in pay, a set back in career; all because the company (or people within it) were making life difficult. Seems to me the white collar folks are more like cattle than the blue collar ones who at least know they’re getting jerked around.
I mean, am I the only one who thinks big corporations are too powerful? Look at McDonald’s suing those two people in England for defamation. It’s like, they can’t do that! What about Free Speech? I thought we could say anything. Guess not. Now McD’s is going after the Scottish guy who is the head of the McDonald’s clan for trademark infringement! Give me a fucking break. I mean, a name is a name is a name and intellectual property rights are totally out of control. Oo, the other day I met a woman whose husband is a lawyer dealing with intellectual property rights in Korea. I’ll have to ask him, when I meet him, for more info about all that. Like, I don’t know much about all that so probably I’m just blowin’ smoke out my ass. But, I tell you, I just despise big business. It’s like those stupid commercials on CNN International for some Advertiser’s group. They threaten that without them we all would have nothing. Oh whine, whine, whine! It’s not like they’re threatened by anything. I mean, product endorsements (ads) are on every space that could possibly ever be used to sell. Sporting events are the worst. It’s outta control! So, it may be that advertisements benefit us, but that doesn’t mean that they can’t be regulated to protect us from them.
Dave doesn't think it's worthwhile to consider anything that's "never gonna happen." I don't understand that line of thinking. I'm a hopeless idealist and I kind of approach the world like one bigass game of Civilization. You know you want to eventually get the SETI program, but first you have to survive thousands of years, racing to get Leonardo's workshop and other small advancements just to reach to final goal. Well, a thousand years in the future I'd like to see world peace, right? Doesn't mean you don't think about the steps you can take now that will get us just that one iota closer to the big one.
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