Category: Thailand 2019

For the first time since the June 18th bike accident, I took my carcass for a ‘run’.

And belying the Sympathy Chorus from the local stray dogs, it really wasn’t that painful.

Maybe it was chow time at the nearby monastery ( circa 5pm ), and the strays were harmonising with the bells.

Maybe they were singing for their supper. It’s more than likely a regular occurrence. Rayong is a little like Hunger City – 70,000 people-oids, and maybe half as many stray dogs.

These  dogs aren’t the mangy specimens you might expect – they’re lean, muscular, survival machines. You could go 10-pin bowling with their balls. They’ll be out in force at dawn, likely because that’s when the roadside stalls fire up their bbq’s. During the heat of the day, they’ll be lying around in gangs under the nearest shade. Come dusk / dinnertime, they’re back on the prowl.

Oh, and the run?  Not too bad for the longest effort since the accident. No pain. I’ll be under 50 mins for 5k in no time….

Some minor discipline road-bumps over the last week or two threw up this gem.

In the contest of the Dweebs, student vs. teacher, my vote goes to the student who authored the gem at left. When I busted him for the third time watching youtube videos in class, I exiled him to a lonely chair, and set him to writing out lines. Fifty of them.

Late in the class, I sidled over to find out how he was getting on. He said he’d almost finished, and handed me to sheet you see. Without looking at it, I told him to go back to his seat, and concentrate on classwork.

On checking later, I see that he’d not only taken the 50 target seriously, he’d numbered his lines. Unbelievable!

My contract says I’m obliged to maintain class discipline. I assume that means that the school honchos wouldn’t be happy to find my students playing tag, or wrestling, or playing video games in class. Or talking over the teacher.

A week or two back, I’d taken the Sledgehammer approach, and started banishing students to the corridor. This was working well, until….

One day the H.O.D poked his head into a classroom and demanded a word. What was ________ doing in the hallway? He’d been asked to leave temporarily after continually talking over me during class. Annoying for me, and impossible for the other students to concentrate.

Apparently that form of maintaining order is unacceptable, because the school director does not like to see fee-paying students languishing in the hallways.

I was to find other methods. Now I have it…. lines! Straight out of the 1950s, but it seems to be working.

With the so-called ‘rainy season’, it’s cooler here as of a morning ride down to the 7-11 for an espresso.

While the above claims it’s 26 deg. C, it feels more like about 24 to me. Perfect, nice n cool. For maybe the first time since I arrived in Thailand in May, I’m better off with the apartment doors open, and air conditioner off.

[ Email letter written 25-8-19 ]

This finds me having dosed myself with real Thai coffee, and thus full of piss and vinegar, as somebody a generation older than me used to say.

The stuff is strong, and is not fit for women and children, Dave. I like to take it with a teaspoon of real NZ butter, which makes it seem less acidic. Being full of piss and vinegar is the perfect time to run off at the mouth. The downside is that there may come with that a touch of bombast.

I travel about 10 minutes by scooter to the cafe, which doesn’t open til 7 am. I’m not yet organised enough to visit weekdays, where I need to leave the apartment by about 7.40 am to clock in ( fingerprint ) by 8am. So it’s a weekend thing. I’m establishing a little rapport with the co-owner, a guy ( probably ) in his 30s. Learning scraps of Thai that way. Also a bunch of older guys meet there weekends at least, and I have a nodding acquaintance with them.

I think I told them I was a ‘tee-CHUR’. That confers a little status socially, but not so in any other realm.

WORK / IMMIGRATION STUFF …possible boredom ahead

I am learning that the Thai immigration system works to let ‘farangs’ ( say it with a Benny Hill ‘L’ ) in, and so spend our money, but make sure we’re  charged for the privilege. On Monday ( tomorrow ) I go with the school admin to the Immigration Dept, where I will pay 5000 baht ( ~250 $NZD ) for a work permit and Visa extension. Those last a little less than a year. Those are also both tied to the school. So that if I resign or am I fired, neither the Visa nor work permit is valid any longer. Ouch.

All of the above is uppermost in my mind recently with the shenanigans going on around contracts ( www.urbanlegend.nz ). It’s a game of chess, and quite mercenary, as I’m finding out. For example, when I had the bike accident, the HOD told me the school would reimburse me for hospital expenses ( 1600 baht , ~ $NZD 80 ). That was June 19. No reimbursement has appeared with my end-of-month pay-check, so I hit him up about it the other day. He first said the school didn’t cover that. I had to remind him of what he had said at the time of the accident. He said he would get back to me the following day. Two days later, he comes back telling me that I need to get directions from elsewhere at the school to take copies of three documents to an outside agency for insurance approval. I.e. making it as difficult and time-consuming as possible for me to claim reimbursement. That’s typical. He also asked me to sign an amended work contract reducing my terms ( by removing an English-language version clause saying I would be reimbursed for Visa expenses ). He tells me what I discover later is an outright lie – that the clause contradicts Thai law. So two examples above where the school HOD has been totally mercenary. All notions of honour are off the table.

So it becomes a question of ‘do they need me more than I need them’? Given my lack of teaching experience, and age ( and hence more difficulty in finding a new position ) it probably behooves me to suck it up, and work out the contract ( til March ). On my side, two foreign teachers have recently left, and a third is about to, leaving their English Dept. looking a little threadbare. Also on my side, the English Dept.’s Thai Computer teacher left Friday, leaving me temporarily holding the ball as the English Dept.’s computer teacher.

The longer-term plan is to see out this contract ( March next year ) , while I save a little, and gird my loins for possible adventures further afield. Maybe Vietnam. The pay is better, the living is ( slightly ) cheaper. But it’s harder to get work with a criminal record, and it’s even hotter. All hearsay and initial research only.

ADDICTIONS

I’m struggling a little with addictions. The 2nd- and 3rd tier ones are cropping up like pimples. The problem is that pimples can become .. boils, welts, and other nasties. Less cryptic? I’ve taken up smoking again ( I know, arrrgghhh ) after giving up e-cigarettes ( having stopped conventional cigs months ago ) on May 1. I started again soon after the bike accident on June 19. Two pinners ( they sell these thin taylors maybe a third of the diameter of a standard cig ) a day. Only after work, night-times. You can guess what happened. It’s now up to 5 pinners / day. And patches. I’m a little freaked that my NZ supply of these latter is about to run out, and I haven’t yet found a source in Thailand. I ran around for an hour yesterday from chemist to chemist on the scent. But no cigar, so to speak.

You might think the extent of that is minor, and it is, maybe. But I can tell the difference in two ways. First, I’m feeling, and looking, a little shittier, especially int mornings. Something which I can ill afford on that last front. And secondly, basic mindfulness has me noticing that my mind is wandering more and more often each day to “mmm, a cigarette would be the thing right about now”. And as you know, that gets harder & harder to distract away from.

Of course, alcohol is the 800-pound gorilla to smoking’s nasty chimpanzee. I’m not even going to entertain letting that Beast out, in case you wondered. I would be back in NZ ( if I made it ) in very short shrift with sorry tales.

Then there’s Old Faithful, the Rottweiler, caffeine. Treat it well, and it can serve you. Treat it badly, and it gets nervous and fritzy. It’ll bite. So far for me it’s a benign companion. As long as I keep a cap on it, and stop well before midday, it behaves.

ABODES

The apartment is working ok for now. I have the electric costs under control, and next month’s bill should be about 80% of last month’s ( 4900 baht, ~ $250 NZD ). I took part in a Thambun ( not sure of the spelling ) last weekend, a Buddhist ceremony. I kind of stumbled into it by sniffing around some free-looking food in the hotel lobby. On asking I was told ‘after 10 a.m.’. I returned then, to find myself invited to join a ceremony involving a posse of marauding local Monks and hotel staff. The Monks can be seen every day of the week wandering the streets barefoot. Their monastery is over the road from the Wiang Walee Hotel ( home ). They wander around exchanging a kind of prayer service for food ‘donations’. You’ll see locals kneeling in front of the Monks. The Monks will be doing their … benedictions, I guess. The locals then donate food. The hotel version works the same way except a little more upmarket. About two dozen of us knelt while the Monks chanted for around half an hour. Then staff ( and me ) bring the food to the Monks, and wait while they eat. When the Monks have finished, it was our turn. It was worth the wait. As you can imagine, Thai food is out of this world. I discovered several things I hadn’t identified before, such as bean-based dessert made of balls with the consistency of … maybe dry sago. I ate three before I reined myself in.

I have a lot to do today, including prep for classes ( 5 different classes ) tomorrow. I’ll also go for a dip in the sea-water at Saeng Chan. The infection in my ankle from the bike accident still hasn’t cleared fully. I’m gambling that sea-water in and of itself is enough of a antidote to the infection to over-ride the minor pollution in the sea-water.

Then little chores like collecting washing ( hotel has a laundary service where they’ll press and iron clothes for ten baht ( 50c ) apiece ).

OK, onward and upwards,

please email / text with latest news from your end(s),

cheers,

D

My state of gruntlement with this current teaching caper is fragile.

It’s starting to look like I might have jumped through all the hoops necessary to stay on in the job til March next year. But it’s looking a little more like I’ve won not the Jackpot, but the Booby prize.

Below is a list of the latest in the Office Politics games which dominate my tiny corner of the world lately.

Plus

I feared that with the departure of my Thai co-teacher, Film, that the school might try to load me with extra teaching hours. That hasn’t happened, and they appear to be hard on the heels of a replacement for Film.

Minus

Today I was asked to sign an amended contract. Different from the original terms, of course. The original said I would be reimbursed Visa fees ( so far 3800 ฿ ). The amended contract said not. I didn’t sign.

Plus

Monday I am scheduled to visit the Immigration Office with Her Som-ness, the High Priestess of all things bureaucratic. I will pay 5000 ฿ for Visa and Work Permit.

Minus

This week Film demanded that I schedule exams immediately for students who recently failed. He also told me that he has already entered a pass mark for those who failed. Making these make-up tests a fiasco for the sake of placating fee-paying parents who would not be please that their wee treasures should not be learning computers. Or English.

I asked him about printing them out, a mysterious Byzantium process which requires sign-offs for Africa. He told me to do it myself. Wonderful. When I tried there was almost a shoot-out over access to printing paper.

I discovered that no NES teacher, or Philippine teacher, or Thai teacher, has more classroom hours than I do. Of a total of around 20+ teachers in the English Programme, only 2 others have the same number of contact ( classroom ) hours. All others have significantly ( 16 – 19 hours vs. my 22 ) less.

On a personal note, many of the Thai & Philippine teachers are just plain bad-mannered. It may be that my Western sensibilities about personal spaces is different. But spreading books and computers all over the lunch table, for example, is just bad manners. Desks are for one thing, tables for another, I woulda thought.

So given the fragile state of affairs, it may have been .. impolitic for me not to have buckled and signed the amended contract.

It’s probably a fight I can’t win. Maybe I should just put my head down, say ‘yessir’,’nossir’ and survive until March, when the contract ends.

Or mnaybe I’m just over-thinking the whole game, and the HOD doesn’t give a damn about whether I sign or not.

The balls is in the his court for now.