::A Geek in Korea::

One of the biggest uncertainties with work happened to be where I was going to be living in a month’s time when my contract was finished and I had to move out of my current company provided apartment. I’m no longer "owned" by my school in any degree. I’m a complete free agent now that I’ve got a marriage visa and a release letter being drafted. I can work where ever I want, provided I have my own housing. Getting that housing wasn’t exactly easy, or cheap, but my wife and I are now no longer going to be homeless in a month’s time.

We have always been planning ahead for the moment where I was going to leave my current school and look for work on my own. You can demand a much higher salary and better hours when the school can see you are well established with your own apartment. It’s one less thing they have to provide, and you can ask for a higher salary to offset some of the cost of living in an expensive place.

Land here is at a premium, and as a result, real estate is incredibly expensive. Our combined salaries for the past year or more was able to only get us a moderately larger apartment than we have now, and that’s just to rent for the next two years. We still have to pay a monthly fee. We didn’t have enough money to forgo the monthly rent because we didn’t have a large enough deposit. We didn’t have a large enough down payment because my school started acting crazy and unreliable about six months before I was planning on leaving. Had I been able to keep working them and not worrying about my legal status or employment, we would have been in a much better position when we looked for houses.

The timing sucked, but we tried to make the best of it. We have a cousin in the real estate business, and we went looking for places around town this morning before work. We looked at three places in smaller buildings, then also went to an actual apartment complex to look at bargain end apartments in a price range we could afford.

Three of the five apartments we looked at were very nice, and for our standards, very livable. The first two were written off because the owners of the apartments had borrowed heavily to own them, and if they had financial problems they would very likely be put on auction where we would lose our deposit key money. Our deposit money was the entire savings we have in Korea at the moment, so this was an unacceptable risk.

We went to a less central location to look for apartments more in our price range with less risk. These places were a bit older, but with the subway expanding into the area in the next year, soon to be in a prime location. They’ll be fine for getting to work as long as I can ride a bike, good for shopping, great for exercise, and playing with the dog when we go out. Riverside parks circle the entire apartment complex, so it will be perfect for getting outside from time to time for a picnic as well.

The first place at this location was a total dump. No one repaired the walls where people hung about twenty pictures, the windows were covered with goo, and I basically broke down, depressed that this was the best we could afford after several years of work. The agent in charge of showing the building mentioned there was a remodelled apartment in the same building going for nearly twice as much, but suggested we went for a look. This apartment, while the same size and design, was 100% better. New finish, new sinks, new floors, walls, everything. Absolutely livable despite the higher price. We had found our home for the next two years.

We signed the papers and move in two weeks later. While I might be a free agent looking for work now, I’ve got a place to call home while I look for work. All I need to do is find the right school in the mean time.

Special culture note: There are "Lucky days" marked on realtors calendars in Korea. Buddhists believe if you move into apartments on these days you will have good luck and make more money. These days are also the most expensive days to hire moving companies because they adjust their pay to reflect the increased demand. Usually the busiest days to move are weekends, but these "Lucky Days" fall according to the lunar calendar and change.