This week at Inkreadable proved to be an interesting time indeed. And I do mean that in the sense of the Chinese curse. I have been with VIPKid for three years have signed my seventh contract and have gotten a raise. For the last year and eight months, I have been receiving my payment into my Dutch bank account. That’s 20 successful payments. All of a sudden in September, my August payment did not hit the account at its usual time of the seventh of the month. I spent last week in a flurry of tickets with the company trying to figure out what was wrong with my payment. They claim that my payment information was incorrect. But how can that be? I received 20 payments successfully into my bank account. TWENTY. Not one, not two, but 20. All of a sudden VIP kid says my banking information is incorrect? As Vizzini from The Princess Bride says “That is inconceivable”. Or if you prefer, bullshit. Nevertheless, I went in and re-entered my banking details again. And had to spend a weekend full of angst as to whether I would get paid or not. Which didn’t make the Amsterdam detective day that I participated in on Saturday as fun as it could’ve been. As of Monday, the money hadn’t hit my account. You should see the volume of tickets that I sent to VIPKid showing bank statements and payments and banking details. I also made the comment that VIPKid should take care of the transfer fees because it was their mistake in the first place. Three guesses as to whether I will win that battle. But the snafu also puts my plan not to work at Christmas in jeopardy. Because if they don’t pay me I need to pull from savings and that I didn’t want to do.
Amstelveen is proving to be a more difficult commute than I thought. It simply doesn’t make it worth it for me to go out there for less than two or three students. It takes all of an hour and a half to get there and if I’m only staying for an hour, even if they’re paying for my travel it’s a hell of an inconvenience. In the first place, the buses run every half hour. So if you miss one you’re going to be late. What sucks about the situation is that I now have four clients out there for the English center and I can’t manage to get them all in one day. It makes for every chance home life as well because I haven’t seen Jasper as often. There’s no point in him coming to me if I’m not there. In addition, I have had to impose on the hospitality of Jasper’s family. His cousin lives not too far from where I teach and when I have a three-hour break between classes I have been imposing on her. After all, I do not want to hang out for three hours at my boss’s house. What’s that you say? You say the solution is simple? I shouldn’t teach in Amstelveen? You are, dear reader, absolutely right. The problem is, because I’m already there it makes more sense currently to add hours then take them away. I have five lessons with the Japanese couple left, I have five lessons with a dutch client, I am starting lessons with a young man focusing on reading and writing. And I still have two clients in the city walking distance from my house. It is a conundrum to be sure but I hope to have it resolved before I leave in December for the states.
Over at the bookstore, Internet issues continue to keep me busy writing. This week was a combination of both writing new stuff and continuing the story, as well as going back and looking at people’s comments from years ago in DC and editing around them. It ended up being 1000 words total which was a great thing. In addition, the edit was so obvious and simple, but I was wondering why I haven’t done it before now. The answer is that sometimes and sometimes you over at the bookstore, Internet issues continue to keep me busy writing. This week was a combination of both writing new stuff and continuing the story, as well as going back and looking at peoples comments and editing around them. It ended up being 1000 words total which was a great thing. In addition, the edit was so obvious and simple, but I was wondering why I haven’t done it before now. The answer is that sometimes editing isn’t simple and sometimes you can’t write yourself or your characters out of that corner. Just because the editing was successful this week, doesn’t mean the rest of the edits will and man, are there a lot of them. The first complete edit of the manuscript will only happen when it’s finished. And I have no idea when that will be. In the meantime, I plod along trying to fix the things that I can without disrupting too much of the story. All in all, I’m pleased with the productivity of my Thursday night writing. I need to figure out a way to make that possible on a daily level.
That’s all she wrote for this Inkreadable installment. BUt, stay tuned. As always, there is more to come.
Inkreadable 