Let's be brutally honest about this: I didn't have to leave England. I could have got myself another silly laboratory job, kept the car and (presumably) eventually have found myself a nice house to settle into. But no. I wanted a severe change, and I certainly got it . . .
Truth to tell, we are really talking about "leaving Wales" rather than England, as I had been living and working in South Glamorgan from mid-1998 onwards after a Major Falling Out with my then boss in the city of Leicester in the English midlands. I had been the chemist at a well-known electroplating and anodising factory there for some fifteen months when my boss threatened (in front of several astonished witnesses, let it be said) to cut my throat. The reason being that he wanted to keep the undercoat on the roof (which was soon to become a second work floor) clean prior to applying the topcoat. Unfortunately, our chemical store could only be reached via this route, and so the conclusion was inevitable.
Looking back, I should have taken the man to court and screwed him for every penny that he had. But instead, I stormed up to the Manager, Neil (baldy guy) and told him what was going to happen. Result: about a month later, this same company employed a recent chemistry graduate from Leicester University (who had been ekeing out a meagre living since graduation, six months earlier, working in a local women's clothes shop for a manager she also despised) for nearly four thousand quid a year less than I was getting.
So I returned to my habit of bumming around looking for a new job (always good for mental maturation, I find), and after five months a telephone call was recorded while I was out: a man called Jim (who turned out to be the Commanding Officer of an RAF Squadron in Wales) was looking for an electroplating/anodising chemist and I was the only one on the recruiter's records. Would I be interested? Well, I spoke with the man and eventually made my way back to Cardiff (where I had lived for three years as a biology student back in 1985-88), and stayed there for nearly four years. Why did I leave? They kept closing down the places on the camp where I was working. Eventually there would have been no job at all. So I did the strategically sensible thing and hopped it.
Now, I had seen the TV series "Shogun" Way Back When on BBC TV, starring well-known Hollywood Bloke Richard Chamberlain, and had acquired thereby a fascination with Japan; I had tried to get a job with the JET Programme back in '92 but alas, even then, I was already too old (a common problem with many people like myself), but from about 1999 onwards, armed with my cable account in Cardiff, I began contacting people in Japan and eventually secured an interview with a certain English teaching company in Shibuya. Alas, however, that eventually fizzled, and I had already accepted voluntary termination from the RAF job when I received an e-mail telling me not to return to Japan. That was not a pleasant Christmas (as the job ended formally on December 31st 2001) but it did commit me to change and getting out of benighted Blighty.
First I went to Taiwan and taught English to little children there; then after ten awkward months being shuttled around between jobs, I finally lost my temper and contacted a man I knew in Masan about a possible job in South Korea. The job offer came back in just three days (and all of this was conducted over MSN Messenger in a local cyber cafe, believe it or not!), and about a fortnight later I was on a cheap flight to Jeju Island, and thereafter to Pusan.
Now I have started my third year working for the same boss here, having shifted location once, but still living in the same place, although after the pointless financial debacle of Taiwan, things are much better money-wise as well and I have started to get around a bit more and go to the pub etc. At the start of the second year, I built a new PC and got a cable connection; nowadays I can call people all over the world using Skype and so my once-hideously expensive calls home have tumbled in cost. Things are not perfect but, as they used to say when I was a biology student in Cambridge (after finishing the course in Cardiff): "It's better than a slap in the face with a shovel." And of course, I get the opportunity to see places and get paid, so I can hardly call it "bad".
But from a Westerner's point of view - and by this I mean "from a Western European's POV" - what you encounter in East Asia can be very disconcerting - an alien culture with a language very different from your own (and which you may have trouble learning) but on the other hand, this can be very liberating, in the sense that because you are not part of the society yourself, you are insulated somewhat from having to behave as the locals would. Yet, it is a great opportunity to learn not only about the place and culture, but also about how the local people think and feel about things, and often this is no different from how you yourself feel and think; it simply expresses itself in a different way. The recent deaths of two elderly relatives back in England made me think that when such opportunities come, and they may only come once in your lifetime, they must be seized and exploited. We waste too much of our lives on trivia and stupidity.
So when I look back upon what I am doing now, at some time in the future, I can be sure that it was not a waste: I spent years of my life in distant lands, learning things which you can only learn first-hand, in a place where I had made my own decision to stay and live. Finally, I was fully independent and controlling my life, to some extent better than I ever had at home, and that cherished independence was what I had always wanted.
Thank you, Korea.
OK, now let's see what this place is like. I live in a planned industrial city called Changwon, which is close to the southern coastal port of Masan and about forty-five minutes' bus ride from the famous port of Pusan. This first picture shows a view from my workplace about six months ago; the bare ground on the left is now occupied by an extensive building site. On the right is the local elementary school, and in fact many of my youngest children come to classes on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays from here, conveniently just across the road.
Changwon seems to have plenty of minor waterways, and in fact Korea has the distinction of being the most heavily afforested country on Earth (we are told), hence there never seem to be any water shortages. Being surrounded by hills, the city is always scenic and if you go to places like nearby Masan or Pusan it is much the same, although in the latter case the city occupies a much larger plain.
Here we can see the hills behind the local government offices, looking due north from the big road circle junction at the centre of the town. Behind me as I was standing there on a hot summer's afternoon was the E-Mart (on the left) and the Lotte shopping/cinema complex (right). South of here is the Sangnam-dong shopping area.
Korea also has very cold winters and although there is a dusting of snow here, it is comparatively rare in the extreme south; in the winter of 2003 we only had a very light sprinkling of snow on a weekday afternoon, which did not last very long. Here we see some snow from the winter of 2004, which lasted a surprisingly long time although it was never very deep. In fact, the footpaths also often degrade badly as a result of heavy rains, and have to be repaired on a regular basis throughout the year.
Finally, here's the place where I actually work five days a week. It is one of a nationwide franchise chain, and from reports freely available on the Internet, some branches are not as good as the ones I have worked for by a long chalk. This is an unfortunate characteristic of all English teaching franchises wherever you go - they are really only as good as the calibre of the owner, which varies on an individual basis. The picture at the top of the page was taken before construction work started; the elementary school is on the left and the developer's safety wall is on the right.
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