Give me a job. I do computer programming. 3 years of experience. Email me for a resume.

Sincerely,

Jermil Sadler
Jermil.Sadler@gmail.com

I got back to work at 3 and hid in the room where no kids go so I could read the Lonely Planet China book to get ready for my Beijing trip this weekend.

My boss pops into my fortress of solitude and tells me I should be reading the books to prepare for class. I look up at him and tell him OK. He starts this creepy pedo-ish chuckle that I hope I can get on video one day. I look back to my Lonely Planet book and act like I can’t smell his cigarette breath. He starts to walk out but some kid comes in with a tennis ball.

He yells at him in Korean and the kid yells back. After 2 minutes of that, my boss leaves and the kid stays. I ignore the kid for a while but he says “Teacher… Catch!!!” We start playing catch.

I open the window after a while because it starts to smell like kimchi in the room from the sweaty kid. Shortly after that, the ball flies out the window. I think the party’s over and I don’t have to worry about this lame game of catch anymore. I was sort of right…

He saw that the ball didn’t get caught on the balcony so he wants me to come outside and help him find it. I figure if I can find it first, I can hide it and the game will be over forever so I go out.

I take the stairs while he waits for the elevator. I find the ball in the street and put it in my back pocket. He comes out about 3 minutes later. I act like I don’t know where the ball is and I point down the hill. He goes that way and I follow him for a bit. When I get bored of that, I take the ball out of my back pocket and hit him in the back of the head with it.

Unfortunately, he was happy to see his ball again and we take the elevator back to the floor of the school. But I get on one of the computers in the smelly computer lab so I don’t have to worry about the game of catch anymore.

I left work at 6:30 (as opposed to my actual quitting time of 8pm) and I set up a dinner date with one of my best friends in Daejeon. We meet at 9:30 and end up staying out until after getting food, destroyed in pool many times, and dinner #2 which ends at about 3:30am.

I did work on pictures for a little while before dinner #1 but I still have a long way to go. So don’t expect anything new until … until …

So instead, read this blog post about Guy #3 by Seth Godin. If you read my blog and are interested in my ramblings, you’ll enjoy him a whole lot more. But please come back to one of my blogs eventually .

As usual, I got to work about 10 minutes late. I went straight to the computer in the corner furthest away from the director’s office. He came in to make copies of something and told me they had a meeting and wanted me to attend.

Usually their meetings are all in Korean so I opt out of them. But when I actually get invited, that means they’ll speak mostly English. But there’s still no point in me being there ever.

This meeting was about what my director wants to do for the “summer intensives”. This is my understanding of what those are…

The kids are out of school for some portion of that time so any schooling they do is extra. And during this extra time, the private English schools (and probably other schools) do their thing a little differently too.

From what I understood, I’ll be teaching kids in the mornings and adults in the evenings. I frowned up immediately but realized I had no choice so I blew it off. Then I remembered that he’d probably change his mind in the next few days anyway. And the schedule isn’t set at all so I started thinking about what I was going to eat for lunch.

After a little while, they started talking about the same thing but exclusively in Korean. After a few minutes of that, I decided I’d had enough and went to get something to eat. I came back with 10 minutes left before teaching time and decided to read a book until then.

I had a pretty normal day of “teaching”. I taught four classes today. One class consisted of 10 minutes of throwing a small bouncy ball around the room at the kids and them throwing it back at me, 10 minutes of them doing the homework that they had a week to do, 25 minutes of rushing through the lesson, finished off with 5 minutes left for the real teacher to do her thing. That’s about an average day for that class.

Work was finished and I had made a commitment with the receptionist at my job. I was supposed to go with her to meet her piano teacher. The whole situation was really odd to me and I didn’t know why she wanted to meet me. But I figured why not.

I talked to one of the other teachers and asked her if she knew anything about it. She said she’d ask the receptionist for me.

The deal was basically that the receptionist tells her piano teacher about me all the time. The piano teacher said she hasn’t met too many nice foreigners and wanted to meet me. It’s funny because they said she wanted to “see me”. Which I could’ve taken to mean she just wanted to look at me and see what a nice foreigner looks like and that would be the end. But maybe that’s just something I would do. If I say I want to see someone, then I probably just want to look at them. But when I worked at the post office, a guy told me he wanted to see me when he really meant something a bit more troublesome than just looking!

Sooooooo I get there and it’s a bit awkward. Two girls are there already playing two different pianos at the same time. It was pretty cool to listen to and they were both great at it. The teacher talked to me for a while in her extremely basic English while the receptionist translated a bit here and there. She ordered pizza for us and made awkward conversation while we waited for it to arrive. It was interesting and somewhat painful at the same time.

When the pizza got there, one of the girls stopped playing the piano and joined us in the bumbling section. She spoke English really well and translated a lot for me. The situation became a lot less uncomfortable but I was still left wondering why I was there.

They asked me what my hobbies were. I told them I like taking pictures. The lady said the kids can make cameras out of paper and draw a picture on another piece of paper. They put that paper inside of the paper camera and take a fake picture. I had no idea what she was talking about so she showed us how to make one. That was about 15 minutes of fun which was better than the grand total of zero minutes of fun before that.

After a while, I realized that I was invited just so the lady could meet me since she heard so many nice things about me. They called me handsome and said I had a nice face shape. The piano teacher said I looked like someone from a children’s show. The first thing I thought of was Little Bill; I’m not sure why.

But it was another one of those “only in Korea” experiences which are generally nice depending on how you look at them. Or, depending on how bad it was, how much time has passed since it’s happened.

Anyway, I’m putting up the penis forest pictures in about 10 hours and hopefully some beach pictures or more Hong Kong pictures about 24 hours from now.

I’m supposed to be at work by 1pm everyday. But every Monday this month, I’ve never made that deadline.

Today I was late because I caught a train from (xxxxx) to Daejeon that didn’t get in until 12:58. So I sent my director a text at 12:58 letting him know I would be late.

I texted him before and didn’t make it to work until 6. My director didn’t say anything at all about it then. So I figured as long as I got there before 6, I’d be fine. I decided to walk around downtown Daejeon until I got tired of it. I wandered around and took pictures of old people doing nothing in particular.

I got to work around 2:30. I got on the computer for about 30 minutes then went home to drop off my bag. I realized then that I was starving and went to a pretty awesome restaurant near my apartment.

I made it back to work around 5. I went to a room where the kids don’t go and I read a book until I started dozing off. I put my head down and slept for 30 minutes.

I woke up and read a little while longer until I decided it was time for me to leave. I’m supposed to stay everyday until 8pm but I never do. I left at 7pm today.

I have a never-ending backlog of pictures that I want to put on here. I have a ton of pictures from Hong Kong that I still have to edit. I put some on facebook from when my sister and I went to see the Ten Thousand Buddhas. I have some from a penis forest that are done and only here on facebook right now. I’ll put those on here in about 10 hours. And I have hundreds more from the beach this weekend that I have to edit too. I’m glad I find joy in doing things photography related.

Today I love it. It’s payday, I can read all day, and tomorrow I’m going to a beach on some South Korean island.

My director has other things planned for his day…

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I’m leaving Virginia for the time being and I’m taking everything I can with me in a PT Cruiser with no back seats. My car is FULL and I can’t see out the rearview mirror. I think I could be dead by the time you read this since I’ll be driving in rain out of Virginia/Maryland and approaching heavy snow in Michigan.

But maybe like in the Fight Club movie, in death, I’ll have a name. I was going to do a farewell from DC post but now I’ll be creepy and make people look at it as a farewell from life post even though I’m betting against death by fiery car crash.

I know there are quite a few people whom I have met or have become better friends with in DC that I’d like to personally dedicate this post to. But I know that since I’m typing this after midnight, I’m going to leave out one or two people that I really should say a few words to. Instead, I’ll send you all something personal as soon as I get settled in my new destination in the new year.

I feel like I’ve learned way more about life simply by living in DC for 3 years than I would have if I had stayed in Michigan. I believe I’d most likely be doing the same things I had done all my life and hung out with mostly the same people I grew up with. I’d almost definitely still be under the tyrannical dictatorship of my parents (a bit of an exaggeration). I wouldn’t have met my past two girlfriends. I wouldn’t have made a ridiculous amount of money doing absolutely no work. I wouldn’t have made a ton of friends from all over the world that I’ll undoubtedly be in touch with for the rest of my life. I have someone who calls me their very best friend (VBF!) who I probably wouldn’t even talk to today if I wasn’t in DC. I have a great friend with whom I started going to a really amazing church with every Sunday. I’d probably still be going to my parents’ boring church if I’d stayed in Michigan.

I can say without a doubt that I would be a COMPLETELY different person in EVERY WAY right now if I had stayed in Michigan. I think the only thing that would be the same is that I would’ve had a job punching keys on a keyboard all day (for WAY less money) and that I’d probably be driving the same car (or the car that I smashed up before).

The most important thing that I learned while in DC was that taking a ton of money doing a job I HATE is the worst thing I could ever do to myself. I had way more money than I should’ve had and all I did was spend it on CRAP that I didn’t need and barely used. It was almost shameful when I saw all the GARBAGE that I accumulated over the years in an effort to find happiness. I realized in the end that the only way to find happiness is to spend my short time in this life doing something I truly enjoy. Once I did that, I actually looked forward to waking up at 8am and getting ready for my day of what I enjoy. I actually enjoyed my nights of photography instead of wasting away in front of a computer or television. I did those things to avoid sleep because I knew that once sleep was over, I’d have to go back to wasting my youth at work doing nothing at a place I really didn’t want to be.

The one thing that BLEW MY MIND was that as soon as I stopped going to work, I completely lost my urge to drink alcohol EVER. I realized a few weeks ago that the two DIRECTLY coincided with each other. I stopped drinking entirely within a week of no longer going to work. Drinking was my escape from the disgustingly harsh reality that the rest of my life would be filled with me getting bossed around by losers if I didn’t do something about it. And instead of doing something about it, I would escape with alcohol. Unfortunately and very fortunately, I realized that fact only after I took action. Sadly, I still see people my age doing the same thing and I don’t know what to do about it. But now, my life is controlled by me alone and now I feel like a real human. I don’t believe we exist to work for some company all day that will fire you for not coming in by 9am every single day among other silly reasons.

On a more positive note, DC, to me, feels like everywhere else in this country combined. Anything that anywhere else is known for can be found in DC. Name anything and what city that represents in the comments and I’ll tell you where you can find it in the DC area. Whether it be for 6 months or 60 years, I feel that everyone should live in the DC area for some time in their life. I wouldn’t trade my time here for anything!

But I digress. In closing, just know that if you get a call from me in the days between now and January 3rd-ish, understand that, even if I don’t say it during the call, you had a major impact on my life. My life is only going to be amazing because you all were in it and I don’t think there’s any way to repay that but I will make the effort. Even if you’re one of the many people I haven’t spoken with since I left my first job, you all are still in my heart. Even if we had a relationship-ending disagreement, I hope you can look at it as a a learning experience and we can get past it and continue to grow together. I’m going to do everything I can to stay in touch with everyone that I can.

But first, I have to make it to Michigan.

YOU DON’T HAVE 2 MINUTES TO CHECK THIS OUT???
CLICK THE LINK!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhqZ0RU95d4

Doc Brown or Creepy Guy from work???

As soon as I saw him, I started laughing. He seemed like he was wandering the halls looking for his next victim.

I spoke to him and his face brightened up! This is what he said…

A guy walked into a store and asked them if they had any t-shirts.
The store worker said no.
So the guy asked him if they had any coffee shirts.

I actually gave him a chuckle at that one. This time, he walked away pleased instead of sad and mumbling to himself like I usually prefer he does.

Two other casual carriers worked there besides me. One guy who was younger than me got fired. He actually was “asked to quit”. They ask you to quit because if you get fired from the post office, you can never get hired again. They asked him to quit and he whined and complained and they said he cried because he didn’t want to quit. They eventually explained to him why quitting was better than being fired and he conceded.

But he usually did the same route while he was there. After he was gone, they had me do that route.

It went pretty smooth. Not too many abandoned houses or houses that were destroyed by fire. No random dogs walking around the yards or barking at me through the mail chute. It was a pretty decent neighborhood overall.

One day while I was delivering mail along that route, I had to get a signature for a certified letter. Some guy came to the door and started talking all friendly to me while I was waiting for him to sign.

He asked where the other guy that usually delivered the mail was. I told him I wasn’t sure what happened to him. (I didn’t want to spread around that he got fired.) The guy started telling me he was a music producer and he gets the hookup in the clubs in Detroit. I said “oh cool”. Somehow we exchanged numbers and we were supposed to hang out eventually.

I didn’t think much about it until he called the next evening.

During the phone conversation, he started asking all of these “getting to know you” type questions. Questions like “where are you from”, “where did you go to college”, “how old are you”. Awkward questions for a guy to ask another guy. At first it was cool, but he kept asking more and more personal questions. It started feeling like he was a young lady I just met and we were getting better acquainted before our first date.

It started getting really weird. He then asked me when I would be delivering mail around his block again. I told him I didn’t know. I actually didn’t know but even if I did, I wouldn’t tell him. The whole thing was getting WEIRD.

I asked him why he wanted to know. He said,”Because… I want to see you.” I almost dropped the phone.

I said, “WHAT?” He said, “Because I want to see you n***a!”

Right when he said that, my mom walked in the room. I looked at her dumbfounded. She looked at me and said, “What?” I didn’t know what to say.

I told the guy that I’d call him back and hung up.

I told her the whole story and she laaaaaaaaughed and laaaaaaaaughed.

I never saw him when I did that route. He called back a few more times but I didn’t answer. He stopped calling. All of this happened in November. I ended up quitting around the beginning of December.

THEN!!! He called me on christmas and of course I didn’t answer. He left a voicemail wishing me a merry christmas and happy new year. I got creeped out all over again. I had nightmares for the next 3 months!!!

Not really but it was creepy all over again.

I didn’t hear from him again after that.