2023년 3월 19일 일요일 – Mountain View 생활 75주차

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tl;dr

I had a rough week with bronchitis, visiting One Medical for a COVID test and prescription. Their system was frustrating, and CVS also took hours to fill my medication. The power outages in Silicon Valley don’t help either. But my PERMs were miraculously approved after being denied, thanks to a difficult lawyer. Life is unpredictable.

It’s been one of those weeks where I think I’m so unlucky, and then I think I’m so lucky. Last week’s cold turned into bronchitis. Once I started coughing, I was coughing up blood like I had lung disease, which meant I couldn’t go to work and my productivity was at a complete standstill.

So on Thursday, I went to One Medical to get a COVID test, a flu test, and a prescription for antibiotics. Every time I visit a hospital in the US, it makes me wonder how such an asshole country became the most powerful in the world.

At 1pm, the doctor messaged me to say that he sent the prescription to CVS, but CVS didn’t have any record of the prescription. One Medical’s service policy is also fantastic, but there’s no way to contact the doctor other than this stupid message. Calling the phone number listed on Google Maps leads to a call center. It takes dozens of minutes, and when I finally get through to an agent, they can’t do anything. They said they’d leave a message. The doctor doesn’t even see the message I left in the first place, and the agent can’t even call the doctor to let him know I forgot my prescription. It’s a really stupid system.

Anyway, the prescription didn’t come until after 7pm and I didn’t sleep until 4am that night. Asshole One Medical, I hope you go out of business. The next morning, I got a message that they had sent the prescription to my doctor. Not a word of apology from this asshole either. CVS is also an asshole. They don’t have a system like in Korea where I can take my prescription to them and they fill it on the spot. I don’t know what slowed them down, but it takes hours for them to make the medication, and they send me a message when it’s ready, but I haven’t heard from them since 3:00 p.m. I was worried that I wouldn’t get it today, so I went back and it was already made. I feel like I’m doing a terrible job. I wonder if firing is flexible in the U.S. because of this kind of work.

There are also frequent power outages here. Do people realize that Silicon Valley, which has the most advanced technology in the world, has such frequent power outages. I try to think of it as a good thing, but I can’t see this stupid neighborhood in a good light. It’s not like it’s the 60s or 70s, it’s a freaking blackout.

At this point, I thought that PERM was going to fail, and there was no reason for me to endure this life anymore. But miraculously, the PERMs passed. The DOL, which had been denying almost all PERMs for months, recently changed its stance and started approving them again.

My PERM was denied and they said they would reconsider. I met an asshole lawyer in the middle, and because of that asshole, I filed my PERM a month and a half later and survived the denial. You never know where life is going to take you.