OK, OK….11 Reasons to get into TEFL; or Why TEFL is Good

I'm gonna do a couple of days work with a government department this week, and so I'm pinning my hopes that this may lead to a path out of teaching (I've thought this before, my official job title last year in Shanghai was 'Management Consultant' wank wank, but the job sure seemed to involve quite a bit of teaching). Anyway, in response to MC Ward, here are some things TEFL has going for it:

1. If you get fired – no biggie…just find another teaching job

2. You’ll never become too comfortable i.e. you’ll always be open to what the hell else you may be able to do

3. Foreign women will cease to hold any mystique for you – they’ll talk to you everyday, sure because they want to practice English, but at least cards are on the table

4. If you want to make hilarious generalisations about different nationalities, your colleagues won’t get angry, they’ll join in

5. In what other job can you read essays in which people write “I went home and played with myself” or “I like children’s pee" (those crazy Koreans)?

6. You’ll never get sick, because it’s a bloody hassle giving the DOS a lesson plan for the rookie reliever

7. If you want to say fuck this, I’m off to Guatemala tomorrow, you can do, provided you can scrape the airfare money together

8. You’ll learn how to be friendly on the outside even when on the inside you want to murder some grammar-obsessed @#!!:(

9. When someone says they live in a condom, you won’t laugh, you know they mean a condo

10. When you have your own kids you’ll be well practiced at inventing fun and interesting games with felt tips and coloured paper

11. You’ll always be in at work half an hour early to scrabble together a six hour teaching plan; shit what am I going to teach tomorrow?

Life Is Cheap... But Toilet Paper Is Expensive

‘Life Is Cheap...But Toilet Paper Is Expensive’ (which is unfortunately not on Youtube) is one of those movies you insist friends watch, so convinced you are of its life changing qualities. After watching they call it off-beat, fucked up and (if I may use the term) plotless. The movie, directed by Wayne Wong, is a fairly half-baked triad flick take-off, featuring a wealth of odd-ball characters mixed in with a lot of documentary film. Some of the weirdo characters are actors: a former Red Guard, a prostitute, a triad gang boss and a crazy taxi driver, but some are in fact just playing themselves: the seventy year old Chinese Elvis and the first Chinese couple to feature on ‘Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.’ There is real film of ducks being slaughtered out back of a Chinese restaurant, the live ducks, four of them tied together, hang upside down; as they have their throats cut, they flap madly, propelling themselves in circles – blood spurts on pure white feathers.

It’s an almost perfect array! But if I could I would add in the following:

1. An Indian doctor who injects Filipina maids with penicillin for gonorrhoea, and barks out instructions to his nurses in Cantonese…

2. Africans drinking beer in the seven-eleven around the corner from the world famous Chungking Mansions, ‘what do you need my friend? A girl? A gun? An elephant?' The Chinese girl working behind the counter at that shop is more self-possessed than anybody up in the mainland: she chats amicably away in English with her varied customers.

3. Drunks down at the harbour-side gurgling out the most throat-ripping Cantonese you’ve ever heard

4. A few ex-pats as the Chinese really like them: rich, arrogant and playing tennis – and of course with very plum accents. Although, I think it is a great strength of this film that, despite the fact that the view of Hong Kong is definitely that of an outsider, there are only Asian people acting in it, and that the director is a Hong Konger - this means that this very sardonic, yet realistic flick can't be labelled racist, imperialistic or whatever...

The main character in the movie is an American of Chinese and Japanese descent; he is a complete fish out of water in the mad world of HK. He has to deliver a suitcase to the triad boss, unfortunately he manages to lose the suitcase and get involved with the boss’s girlfriend. His punishment? Eating a plate of shit. I think the suitcase gets stolen at the beginning of the chase scene, filmed with a camcorder, which spirals through one of those typical HK buildings with endless mezzanine floors.

I try and make the best out of my time in Hong Kong when I'm there, as it’s a happy medium between the quietness of NZ and the craziness of China. It is like the West in that you can walk the street without being harassed and like the East in that there is a bloody lot of stuff going on in the street. I usually stay up in Mongkok, which is supposed to be a triad stronghold. All I ever see is shops. The building I stay in is a sweaty skyscraper with minuscule lifts and minuscule rooms – much like a mini, less ethnically diverse version of Chungking Mansions.

In the evening, like everybody else who’s from out of town and looking for nightlife, I head to Lang Kwai Fong Bar Street, I’m supposed to meet a lawyer friend, but he has to work. I end up talking to some Aussie who is in town for a financial conference; he talks a lot about Asian development, using the old China isn’t a democracy, so there are getting ahead as opposed to India argument. ‘Some’ beers latter I’m talking to three Chinese women; one is a Eurasian in fact. Eurasian has always stuck me as a ridiculous word (it's largely died out thank Dog (so why the fuck are you using it then?)), it reminds me of the movie ‘Love is a Many Splendored Thing’ – a fifties’ romance, largely filmed in HK with lots of scenes in stately homes on The Island. The Eurasian heroine, a doctor and a champion of the Chinese people is based on Han Suyin. Of course Han is not actually played by a Eurasian, but by one fo the Hollywood vixens of the day, Jennifer Jones, in a dark wig. The Romantic nonsense (in my opinion anyway although the real life Han Suyin sounds interesting) of this movie, contrasts nicely with my beloved ‘Life is Cheap’...

I end up getting friendly with one of the Chinese women, God knows why? She is really quite unattractive and the wrong side of thirty-five. She drags me of to Wan Chai, the district full of South-East Asian prostitutes in dodgy discos, which I’ve thankfully avoided in the past. Then we go back to an apartment she has just rented on the Peak – there is no furniture yet – and what she’s paying in rent could just about buy an apartment up in the mainland. Anyway, the walk of shame in the morning is interesting – Filipina maids and Chinese boys with British accents. One Chinese boy hugs his Filipina maid: surrogate mother or first love?

It’s not really a long journey back to jackhammer Mongkok from Victoria Peak – but the two scenes are worlds apart. I sleep uncomfortably, then go out for a freshly squeezed mango juice – mango juice in Cantonese sounds pretty similar to mango juice Mandarin I muse to myself. Later, in McDonald’s I notice a worker mopping the floor who obviously has downs-syndrome. You wouldn’t see that on the mainland: handicapped people out in the open, well not often…One good thing Chris Patten (last British Governor of HK) did – work opportunities for the handicapped? Was it Chris Patten who put this policy in place? You're right I’m too lazy to research this…

Ingrid Betancourt

I’ve just been watching a video of Ingrid Betancourt’s first speech after she was rescued from the FARC (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionadas de Colombia). It’s brought to mind some thoughts on elitism, image, nationality and really being the real deal.

There is also an interesting video of Ingrid meeting with the FARC as part of her 2002 presidential campaign. She appears as a fit and elegant woman casually dressed in a t-shirt. She says forcefully ‘no more kidnappings, no more kidnappings’ At one point the camera cuts to an oldish bearded, bespectacled guerrilla leader dressed in full camouflage. He sits back listening, relaxed, expressionless.

I think I may know what is going through his mind: 'What the fuck is this woman, who spent her youth in posh schools in Paris know about what it is really like here for the people of Colombia. She is the daughter of a diplomat, who married a French diplomat. She will send her children to the same rich schools – they will explain to gringos how dangerous their country is at flash parties. She herself swans around the world talking about the environment – what does she know about the environment! I’m going to teach this bitch a lesson.’

And so it happened: Farc kidnapped Ingrid not long after. No one could argue now that she doesn’t know what life is really like for the poor and downtrodden. She spent over six years being marched about the jungle being told what to do, by guerrillas who resented her as a member of the elite: the elite of Latin America, who seem to have more time for Europe and North America than their own countries.

The only pictures I've seen of her in captivity show her composed, sad but determined, sitting like a kind of grieving Madonna. Her hair is long and thin – not cut in some Paris salon like before. I’m sure this image will have continuing popular appeal for the Catholic masses. She seems to be a natural self choreographer – saying now she will not cut her hair until all FARC hostages are released – thus tying her own self to the history of Colombia (if you catch my drift).

She begins her speech by taking of her army hat, smiling, saying how emotional she is and then thanking god and the virgin. Her speaking style is emotional, full of religious invocation, patriotism and peace. Her slow style didn’t come across so well in English on the Larry King show – but not because of her English – she spoke near perfectly – this makes you realize how educated she is, a real world apart from the campesinos of Colombia. She is safely in France now, wearing one of those blue suits with a white blouse like all French women do, but man it must have been tough for her there in the jungle.

I don’t really know about her politics, I know she is a greeny, but also not off-side with Uribe who is a conservative. It will be interesting to see how her story maps out…they are calling her the new Joan of Ark in France. The operation to rescue her also sounds like a very interesting one…the glory is going to the Colombian army, but who knows the extent of US involvement? She was after all rescued along with three American nationals.

Getting Fired

A career that wasn’t:

After finishing University I got a job working for a landscape gardener in Queenstown. The owner of the landscaping business, my boss, was a Dutch guy called Rudd. Rudd later tragically died, struck by a truck after leaving a local council meeting.

A lot of the work was fairly simple stuff: mowing lawns, felling trees and scrub cutting.

Now, I probably wasn’t the right guy for the job – and learnt from the experience just how unpractical a person I am: I lasted a month, and was pretty cut up when Rudd fired me. I will say in my defense that he fired the guy before me too.

On one particular work day, Rudd picked me up at 7am: we drove to an industrial area, and stopped at a big yard filled with piles of timber and slabs of concrete. Rudd’s face that morning, I noticed, was angry rock on the point of becoming molten at any moment. I knew it was inevitable that one of my impractical incidents would provide the 3000 odd degrees needed to liquidize…

We were there to get several palettes of wood for building a retaining wall. Such was Rudd’s ire that he even swore at the forklift driver, who did not put the wood on the back of the truck exactly as Rudd liked.

The day before had not been a good one: morally I felt we were even, but perhaps work wise I was the cause of the trouble. I had done well using a concrete compactor – a new and strange, not to mention heavy machine - but had left tools in impractical places, always trudging round to try and find them again. My impracticality drove Rudd insane.

The big incident had come at the end of the day with the chainsaw. We were cutting up the trunk of a felled tree. I was holding the trunk, Rudd the saw. ‘Closer dammit, it’s shaking like hell’, he yelled several times. In the end he actually nipped my trousers with the chainsaw, leaving small a hole. He told me I was an idiot – but I think he felt guilty. He was a man full of rage, an old school Dutchman who believed only he was a hard worker. His young family was nice though, and I’m sure he was nice to them. But that’s the position of most conservatives isn’t it? Let’s live a perfect life full of love – but fuck those outside the circle of trust. However, I digress…

After picking up the wood we drove to a rich suburb on the edge of town.

The site for the retaining wall was up a steep rise, inaccessible to the truck. Rudd and I had to carry the beams up there on our shoulders. It became a competition to see who could go faster; the older Rudd putting all his rage into it. With the advantage of youth I beat him on that occasion. However, I was then humiliated when he criticized the first few beams I laid in the soil – ‘they are not level man! look at this’ – he pointed vehemently at the spirit level.

After working most of the morning on the retaining wall, we headed off to another job. In fact, Rudd dropped me off at a farm, where I was to clear an overgrown field with a weed-whacker. He would come and pick me up at the end of the day. Now if the morning had been tense, things were about to get dramatically worse. Absent minded bumpkin that I am, over long grass I opened the the weed-whacker head to clean it out; unfournatley, I managed to drop one of the metal washers from inside the head...

After some time searching in the grass, I gripped my head, pulled at my hair and screamed inwardly. There was no way I could use the whacker without that washer and I knew there could only be one reaction to this from Rudd, the man had no sides (life is at its worst when there is only one possible result).

Several hours later Rudd pulled up in his white truck. He got out and surveyed the uncut grass as if looking at the worst crime of the century. To him, of course, it was a cataclysmic event: he was paying for this wasted time:

"What happened here?
Lost it huh!
Gone!
Can’t believe it!
You did it on purpose..."

And thus I was fired…

An Unsuccessful Labourer

I'll shoot straight with yea: I'm trying to write a comic story about a fat guy who muddles through a number of labouring jobs - and eventually goes nuts, while his partner in crime - a country boy who sleeps with the ugliest women in the world - ends up as a famous yet terrible poet. I already have a number of his bad poems, on the nature of hard yakka and the anitpodean landscape, mapped out. I keep meaning to read Patrick White's 'Tree of Man' so I can get a bit more into the flow of things. I've also got a load of other works in mind to help me 'model' the story - including a few biology books on bats - but I won't go into that here.

Now out of all the things I've tried to write, I've always started of with a pretty corny plot - and the only time I've ever brought anything to completion was a story called 'The Girl from Magnitogorsk with the Clap', after some months with that one I finally sat down and wrote 3000 words in a day - the next 3000 words taking a couple more months.

To get this comic story going I'm going to whip up a few thoughts on the various labouring jobs I've had. The ones which come to mind: being a landscaper's labourer back in 2000 (I got fired and it's not a bad story), and my stint working as a cotton picker. I don't want the story to be about me you understand - but hey you gotta write what you know...

Onwards and upwards then - and fighting off the despair of another day teaching tmw. I am also applying to become a Customs Officer...

Cheers, a mildly determined Brewman