well, that changes things

As I wrote before, I have two proofing/editing jobs. One job pays substantially better than the other, but doesn't provide much work. The other job has been giving me a slew of assignments, but pays peanuts for them. The better-paying job has insisted on paying me by wiring money to my Korean account, where it's not immediately accessible to me (I have my Korean ATM card with me, but it won't work in any US ATMs). Since that job isn't sending assignments with nearly the same frequency as the lesser-paying job, I'm content to let the funds pile up in the Korean account, where they'll sit and wait for my eventual return to Korea.

I've convinced the folks at my lesser-paying job to wire cash directly to me, here in the US, but we had a bit of a miscommunication about when, exactly, I could expect pay. They had said, vaguely, that pay would come "near the end of the month," so I had expected pay last month, sometime around Christmas. It never arrived. I wrote an email to the boss a few days ago, asking him about the pay situation, and just got his reply today. According to him, payday is the 25th of the month, and it's for the previous calendar month's work.

This is fairly standard practice in Korea, so I don't begrudge this, but it does change matters: I did relatively little work in December compared to what I'm doing now, and my January pay will reflect this. I therefore won't see a substantial payment until late February, and then again in late March, which is problematic. I had hoped to restart the walk in early March, but might have to delay a few weeks as I'd like to have a satisfactory amount of financial padding before I begin the walk again. Hakim might have done his 3300-mile walk with only $217 to his name, but I gather that he wasn't saddled with a $600/month scholastic debt.

So that's a note to the folks out west who are awaiting my return: I might not be seeing you again until later in March.


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