Discovery Channel just aired a programme on the Sampoong Dept Store disaster. I hope it serves as a reminder to what taking shortcuts leads to… It’s been 11 years now, which is about twice as long as the building “defeated the odds” as they said in the show. That’s right. The building didn’t even last six years.

But then again, I never liked that pink colour they painted the exterior walls with…

troutgirl: Thick calves! Shiny hair! Suffering!

troutgirl:

george: I guess it’s a better tagline than ‘Dogs taste best when eaten with fermented cabbage’

george: hmmm…. that probably crossed some sort of line.
3000 years of Korean womanhood

The Marmot will agree with me, I guess: nothing wrong with having a little kimch’i with your poshint’ang… And a glass of soju. Or two.

This trip was kind of, if not eventful, at least not dull. I met the CEO of a large provider on the Bordeaux → Paris leg, was a bit awkward, since we don’t know each other well, and we were seated next to each other. I am not a small talk champ, which didn’t help… Then, in Air France’s Lounge, CDG 2F – thanks to the guy at AF who came up with the stupid idea of merging First Class and Biz Class lounges, I had the pleasure to sit for a while next to Monica Bellucci – she is indeed beautiful. She spent her time speaking on the phone, and had to sign one autograph for a family with kids, she was even very gracious about it. I tried hard *not* to oggle, a task helped by the fact that the aforementioned CEO was still with me…

Then I got bumped up to Biz Class – as usual being Flying Blue Platinum doeth have its perks – and it so happened that the plane had been refitted to the new Biz Class, which is very very nice. The seat unfolds to a bed – albeit not completely flat – and the equipment is supposed to be nicer. Me, I don’t really care, as I usually spend 2/3 of my time in the plane sleeping – which is why I am all the more interested in the seat’s comfort, not the other trimmings.

Ah but there’s one I did enjoy a bit: 110V directly from the seat’s central armrest. Which means the ‘puter never gets out of juice. Between work, games and *real* movies, man, the one third I spent awake wasn’t boring…

That bag had *eight* bottles of wine/booze in it. 22 kg/48 lbs…

First Class ain’t shabby either.

Off to Korea in a couple of hours. Arriving in Seoul on Sunday morning, KST.

Can’t seem to be able to post on that blog, so I’ll just trackback.

The frank mention of breaks provided for periods did crack me (and those students who knew this use of the word) up laughing. Having said that, the notion is not, perhaps, without merit.

The day off for periods is a legal requirement. In the companies that do give it – many just ignore the law, either by ignoring the legal vacation scheme or by lumping this day together with the unisex, cumulable, one-day-a-month day off [월차] – some may take it for its intended purpose, but my own experience as an employer is that they take is when they need a day off…

Actually, Korea’s 노동법 Labour Laws are very generous. Here’s the skinny [as of October 2004, when I finally dropped my copy of 노동법 in the skip. Every year between 1998 and 2004 I had my secretary get me a new copy, just to be on the safe side(*). The possibility the law’s changed for the “worse” is infinitely small]:

• one day a month, cumulable, for men and women, from the first month of employment
• one day a month, non cumulable, for women’s *condition*, from the first month of employment
• 10 days of annual paid leave for employees with one year behind their belt – that number can be reduced to 8/9 if attendance has been below a certain threshold; can’t remember how much, since we never had the case. From the second year of attendance onwards, you add one day per year, until you reach 21 days [I think]. After this, the company can decide to award you extra pay instead of increasing the number of days.

Example: an employee with 3 years in the company gets 12 days of yearly paid leave, 12 days of monthly leave, and if she’s a she, one day per month for periods pains. That’s 24/36 days off. An employee with 20 years in the company gets [at least] 21 +12 [+12 for a woman], ie 33/45. Not bad eh? Theoretically at least, because I haven’t met a single person employed in a Korean company who enjoyed these benefits. Sometimes I had to explain the law to people [they were surprised that the law is this generous], and they’d say “우리 회사엔 그런 게 없어요…”; There’s no such thing in our company. Like companies make their own laws. Or something…

OTOH, Koreans who worked for foreign companies? Sure! Especially – but not limited to – those that have a union. Any breach of the law can get reported, sued, etc… A little double-faced, but nothing new here…

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(*) The reason I kept up to snuff, more or less, on Korean Labour Laws is that I wanted to be able to give my employees everything they deserved, by law, but to be able also to say “there’s no such thing in the law” when they came to me with vague profiteering schemes, arguing “it’s like this in Korea”. Stangely enough, many of the employees I had would have preferred more cash and fewer days off. But there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in Hell it’d happen, especially with my last employer, a very Dutch company…