Facing the End of Hometown: Yeouido

Note: Things have changed, and due to popular demand I've moved this post from the first page. All new posts will be of my post-Yeouido life (although there is a definite Korean bent to much of it, seeing as all of my in-laws are Korean) so please read on and see what new stuff I'm up to. Also: be sure to enter your email into the Blogarithm box to the right...then you'll get an email everyday that I update this site, if you like.

Yes, this is not a publicity stunt or because I think Korea sucks or anything. As of this Saturday (the 20th) I'll be no longer with my firm in Korea and will be on a plane bound for Canada. The last 2 years has been great but I have a few things that keep me from being here any longer: (i) my wife and kids are in Canada and I don't foresee them coming here in the near future and even if they do it'd be for at most 1-2 years; (ii) when I speak with others outside of Korea (U.S., Europe) they seem and are much more advanced than the thinking here, and I have to think of my career path; and (iii) the market here is turning, as always, but I have no idea when it will be a lucrative as I'd like/expect.

Don't get me wrong, I love Korea and Koreans and the work, but it's just not coming together here as I had planned--and I've given it a lot of time to turn the corner.

At the end of the day, I know there are positions in other firms (in other countries) that can give me all that I want and need for my family and my career. I'm sure that I will come back here (my wife is from here and I have many friends here I want to keep in touch with) but it will be more as a tourist (like Minaz and Yusheng did these past couple of months) than anything else.

I also wanted to end on an up-note, much like Jerry Seinfeld did. Clients here are warming to hedge funds (in spite of the bad press lately) and I've set up a pretty good system for the firm; but someone else will have to take it to the next level.

In the spirit of Seinfeld, whose last episode had Time of Your Life as its theme song, I thought I'd butcher another song (as I did Englishman in New York earlier). It's to the tune of 1979, my favorite tune to 'sing' (to use the term loosely) in the 노래방/noraebang.

2002

Shakedown two-thousand and two, James got here and knew just what to do
Get up early and hop on the train
Hedge funds on the brain
A new and exciting place
For this country hick-town boyish face
We were sure we'd never see an end to it all

And I don't even care to shake these han-gook blues
And we don't know just where our dreams will go
To beer, oh no
Forgotten and absorbed into the street below

Double Jack, cola poured and mixed
I don't know how to get this place fixed
Soju-bomb city liftin' dues, we can see that

We don't even care, as restless as we are
We feel the pull in the land of a thousand guilts
And poured cement, lamented and assured
To the lights and towns below
Faster than the speed of sound
Faster than we thought we'd go, cloaked in a shroud of hope

James B got to knew the way
To do work and to get his pay
No apologies ever need be made
He knows Seoul better than it fakes it, to see

That he don't even care to shake these han-gook blues
And he don't know just where his dreams will go
Not here, oh no
Somewhere else for him to find, in the end, that's all

Plane leaves from Incheon Saturday
And he'll be back in some other way.

Well, I will continue to update this blog...and I plan on starting another once I establish a new hometown. If it's exotic like this place it may be an intersting read.

Later...