Living In Thailand Blog
Sunday 15th March 2009
When you look at what a mess the planet is in now, it isn't too difficult to figure out why. We've gone made.
'Political correctness' has already ensured that the economies of Asian countries have leapfrogged Western countries; 'progressive' teaching has created a couple of generations of stupid people; and now we aren't allowed to criticise students.
I didn't realise that the UK has adopted a 'self-esteem agenda', which (naturally) came from the United States.
Warning over narcissistic pupils
We are only allowed to praise students now (in order to raise their self-esteem), but this has created a generation of kids who focus on themselves and feel "entitled". Instead of educating, teachers must now play the role of a psychiatrist.
As Western countries are currently running around worrying about protectionism, Malaysia has just thrown out 70% of its foreign workers. As I've stated before, so-called political correctness doesn't exist in Asia. Asians take care of themselves first, as we all should do.
There isn't any hope for the Western world until some politicians arrive on the scene who are brave enough to reinstate common sense.
If you feel guilty about being too happy and want to depress yourself, the best place to turn to is one of the Internet forums about matters related to Thailand.
I stopped visiting sites about Thailand several years ago where bitter and twisted farangs can post anonymous comments. However, when searching for information I sometimes find myself looking at a Thaivisa forum or something. It happened again today.
I can't even remember what I was looking for but I ended up looking at a forum posting about the contract killings of farangs in Phuket and it was full of the same old bitter and twisted comments from bitter and twisted farangs - you know, the ones who have been living in Thailand forever and know everything there possibly is to know about Thailand, except some minor details such as speaking and reading Thai.
As usual, I came away feeling really negative about Thailand. These forums are dangerous because the negativity can be quite contagious.
Many people these days are far too dependent on the Internet. The Internet is a wonderful invention and there are lots of benefits but there is also a very negative side. You can easily find yourself listening to people via forum postings who, under normal circumstances, you wouldn't normally give the time of day to.
The Internet is great but use it carefully.
Saturday 14th March 2009
It seems hard to imagine now that during my first six months in Thailand I had nothing to do. I just wandered around exploring and taking in my new surroundings.
Money and visas weren't a problem back then. The exchange rate was great, I was getting lots of interest on my savings, and my stock market investments were doing great. Staying in Thailand wasn't a problem either because all I had to do was take a trip to the border every 30 days.
How things change.
On top of my hectic schedule recently, I have also had some problems. One potential problem with this web site took me about 40 hours to fix last week and I also had a problem with a new computer I bought. Both problems are now fixed.
The computer problem worked out well in the end. Buying a cheaper model with problems and then paying out a little more for an upgrade saved me about Bt5,000 compared to if I had bought the better model straight away from another shop. All's well that ends well.
My phonetics course went well last week and it was good getting back to teaching adults. We still had a laugh but there was a real desire to learn. With a lot of the kids I teach, they just want to play all the time and that same desire to learn isn't there.
I was the same as a kid because when I had to go through all my formal education my brain still hadn't fully developed. If only I could get a second chance now but unfortunately it is too late.
This is the reason girls tend to be much better students. Their brains develop earlier whereas all boys seem to want to do is act the clown to make their friends laugh. Things start to turn around with older students.
With Master's Degree and PhD students, the men are often better. If there is a God, I think he must have been playing a joke when he made teenage boys. I sometimes think the best thing to do with teenage boys is lock them away and return them to society once their hormones have calmed down.
I should definitely have been locked away during my teenage years.
When I look back on my achievements and successes since moving to Thailand, some may seem surprising. My biggest achievement so far (touch wood) is avoiding being involved in a road accident, but there was another one last week. I prevented a wedding being cancelled!
A girl I used to work with has known her boyfriend for about five years and they got engaged a while ago. She's a very pretty girl (if a little moody) and he's a nice guy. He works for an international oil services company so is abroad a lot of the time but he earns a lot of money and he is looking at retiring very early.
They bought a house, fitted it out how they wanted, and planned the wedding in August. I saw him on his own a few weeks ago in the supermarket and he seemed fine.
However, she called me and said he had called the engagement off. She was devastated. We spoke a few times last week and the drama unfolded.
He realised he had made a mistake and wanted to get together again. First, he went to see her parents (where he broke down in tears) and then he waited for her after work and fell to his knees pleading for forgiveness.
Poor guy. At this point I felt myself welling up.
They are very well suited, perfect for each other, and crazy about each other. As a male myself, I think that with the wedding approaching he got cold feet and was worried about the ultimate commitment of marriage (a feeling I know only too well).
I guess he wasn't sure and it wasn't until it looked as if he would lose her that he was sure about his feelings. However, when he wanted her back she was very wary and was afraid of getting hurt again.
What she wanted to do was to impose a two year waiting period for him to prove himself again.
Usually, I am never sure what to say about relationship problems but for this problem I felt very strongly that she was wrong. I know her boyfriend and he's a good man. I could also understand what he was going through.
I told her quite forcefully not to make him wait but to go ahead with the August wedding plans. If he messes her around again before then, sure, dump him but don't make him wait another years or the relationship might not survive.
What was interesting was her reaction. I think that what I said was what she was thinking but she just needed to hear it from someone else. After we spoke, she called him and gave him the good news.
That evening they went to their new house to water the plants and she sent a message thanking me and telling me how happy she was. I was also told I will be a very special guest at the wedding!
On the subject of watering plants, I didn't inherit my mother's green fingers but I have three hibiscus plants in pots on my terrace to brighten up the view from my window. They look really nice when they flower.
I went out to water them the other night and had quite a shock. One plant had been completely stripped of leaves and flowers. The other two consisted of half-eaten leaves and no flowers. A closer inspection revealed the problem.
The plants were covered with large, bright green, caterpillars with - apparently - voracious appetites. I went to grab one but it felt sticky and irritated my skin. I got some tissue paper and removed them. There were about 15 but there hadn't been any a day or two before.
What I should have done was to save at least one to photograph but instinctively I just got rid of them as quickly as I could. I did some research later and I think they were caterpillars of either a Swallowtail butterfly or some kind of hawk moth. I have seen huge moths here.
I also found out that these caterpillars can emit a poisonous, smelly secretion that can irritate the skin. Nasty little buggers. I am now doing regular caterpillar checks twice a day.
They must have got there by the butterfly or moth laying eggs first. What surprised me most is that they appeared in a very short time and were huge. How did they get from the egg stage to being such big caterpillars so quickly?
I am just hoping now that my lovely plants will recover.
A friend invited me to the official opening of her new business today. When a new business is launched there is always a special opening day party for good luck. Monks are often invited to perform a blessing ceremony and lots of food is laid on.
Friends and family are invited, many of whom give money and gifts for good luck. Thais are very superstitious and this type of thing is very important.
When I got there today, there was a rug and pillows on the floor with someone already asleep. As soon as I sat down I was invited to sleep. If you invited someone to a party in the West and they went to sleep as soon as they arrived you might think it was strange. But not in Thailand.
I have reached the stage now of not asking students what they did at the weekend because I know that 90% of them will say they slept. When Thais have a day off, sleeping is their favourite activity.
On days when I do feel sleepy I always feel guilty for wasting my time by sleeping. This isn't so for Thais. Having nothing to do (mai mee arai) and sleeping the whole time isn't considered a waste of time at all. It is perfectly acceptable.
I can only think this must be attributable to Buddhism where the ultimate level of meditation is to clear the brain of all thought. Our minds should be peaceful but daily life means we never stop thinking about things and can never truly be at peace.
I saw Iss on Sunday and she told me she used to think a lot which caused her mental anguish. She still has the same problems in life (as we all do) but now she tells me she doesn't think about them.
Sometimes I feel that this attitude is the reason for why so many Thais underachieve but sometimes I envy their ability to switch off from everything, clear the minds, and sleep.
No doubt, another reason for the Thai fondness of sleep is the intense heat. With each passing year the hot season just seems to get hotter.
In my friends new office there was an air-conditioner running downstairs but when I went upstairs it was like a sauna. I just can't imagine how life used to be before air-conditioning.
When I start to overheat it makes me very lethargic and all I want to do is sleep. There are lots of Thais who work outside doing construction, farming and other manual work. Many come from the Isaan region. Their work doesn't change in the hot season and they work just as hard, spending all day outside in the heat.
How they do it, I just don't know.
Thais are amazingly perceptive and great readers of people. Since moving to Thailand I have experience periods of happiness and unhappiness. I always think my outward appearance is the same but when I'm unhappy Thais stay away, and when I feel really happy inside they are attracted to me like a magnet.
During unhappy times I have tried to smile and act normally but Thais always know what is going on inside. I was speaking to another farang about how Thai girls have an uncanny ability to home into foreign men who are happy and successful.
It's as if they have a sixth sense.
Thais can be very difficult for foreigners to read because so much is concealed. One reason is that image and outward appearance is very important. Thais are taught that however sad they feel inside, they must smile and put on a happy face for the world to see.
The other reason is cultural. The cultural values of greng jai and kaorop mean that Thais will often conceal the truth out of respect for another person, or to avoid imposing on, or making that person feel bad.
As a teacher, you won't be told directly you are no longer wanted ... for whatever reason. The Thais will make a soft excuse such as they are busy for a while so want to suspend lessons and will call you again when they want to resume learning. You won't hear from them again.
They do this not to be deceitful but to avoid hurting your feelings. If they were to tell you the truth - that you are hopeless and no one can understand you - this might be hurtful so they do it in a nice way.
After living in Thailand for a few years you start to understand Thais better. This is when you no longer believe anything you are told, and take nothing at face value.
Body language is extremely strong and even the best actors cannot disguise certain body language. The longer you live in Thailand, the better your own skills become at reading body language. You start to realise when smiles are genuine and when they aren't.
This, I think, is the reason for Thais having almost a 'sixth sense' when it comes to reading people. They know better than anyone that nothing is what it seems on the surface and because of this they develop excellent body reading skills.
The Thai education system does a fantastic job teaching Thais the Thai language.
I try to write as much as I can now in order to get away from my dependency on dictionaries, but spelling and remembering tone marks is still difficult. When there are so many individual Thai consonants that perform the same function, which one do I choose?
The good thing is that it doesn't matter where I am in Thailand, there are always lots of people around who can help. I have never heard anyone say they can't spell a word, or that they aren't sure about a tone mark.
The consistently high level of literacy is quite amazing; and a real credit to the education system. I can't say the same thing about the Western system of education when, every day, I see 'definitely' spelt as 'definately', and 'led' spelt as 'lead' (BBC journalists are even guilty of the latter error).
Rote learning gets a lot of bad press but it is a very good method for committing things to memory. My primary school in East London was very old-fashioned and I learnt my times-tables, as well as a lot of spelling through rote learning.
Give any Thai student the infinitive version of any English verb and ask them what the past tense (chong sawng) or past participle (chong saam) versions are, and they will most likely be able to tell you.
They learn this vocabulary by rote and it is highly effective.
What is not so good about the education system is giving students the ability to think. They learn an awful lot of English vocabulary by rote but the ability to think about how to use that vocabulary to construct sentences isn't so developed.
The BBC ran a piece about how crossing the road in a country can tell you about that country's cultural values. In England a pedestrian only has to place a foot on a zebra crossing and traffic from both directions will stop. (Well, that's how it used to be).
In Thailand there are certain times of the day when I just can't get across the road. When trying to cross near traffic lights there should be a natural break in the traffic as the lights change allowing me to cross, but there never is.
Thais are experts at running red lights. The last person to run the light will do so just before traffic from the other direction starts to move, which means there is never actually a break in the traffic - even a small one - to allow pedestrians to get across the road.
Zebra crossings are a complete waste of white paint; I honestly don't know why the Thais bother. I was riding in the back of a sawng-thaew one day when suddenly it screeched to a halt, throwing all the passengers forward violently.
This incident was caused by two middle-aged farang women who had spotted a black and white ornament in the road and mistaken it for a place where it was safe to cross. As they stepped into the road their action took the Thai drivers completely by surprise, forcing several vehicles to brake heavily. Fortunately for the two women, they weren't run over.
You know I'm a Brit because I whinge a lot. Judging from the BBC article, if I was an Italian living in Thailand I would think Thai road manners were perfectly normal. The comment in the article about zebra crossings in Italy being nothing more than road art sounded very similar to Thailand.
Wednesday 4th March 2009
I have attempted to add some RSS feeds so people can receive notifications when I make changes. Thanks to Catherine for pointing me in the right direction with this.
As you can see, I don't use any recognised blogging software for this site so I have had to do this all manually. This is new to me and I'm not sure that what I've done will actually work! Please bear with me and let me know if you have any success - or not.
(No) Hope University in Liverpool is offering a Master's degree course called "The Beatles, Popular Music & Society", which consists of four 12-week taught modules and a dissertation.
I did a quick search for other useless degrees and the following came up:
- David Beckham Studies
- Parapsychology
- Doctorate of Philosophy in Ufology
- The Phallus
- Surfing Studies
- Star Trek
- Golf Management
- Art History
- Philosophy
- Women's Studies
- The Science of Harry Potter
- Learning from YouTube
- The Simpsons and American Culture (Bart and Homer, not OJ)
- Robin Hood Studies
The tried and trusted 'Media Studies' and 'Travel and Tourism' offer good alternatives for lazy students who don't want to do any serious work if you can't get signed up for any of the above courses.
If you are planning to teach in Thailand, I recommend spending a few years pissing it up in the student bar while 'studying' for one of these courses as the best way of improving your career prospects in the Land of Smiles.
What's that? You can't spell and you don't understand grammar? It doesn't matter as long as you have a degree; and any subject in the above list will be fine.
Thais love football (especially English football) and they love ghosts. What could be better than a Bachelor's degree in David Beckham Studies followed by a Master's degree in Parapsychology? All you would need to do is add a PhD in Jatukham Ramathep Studies and you will be able to get a highly paid teaching job anywhere in Thailand.
Tuesday 3rd March 2009
A blog entry from a few years ago written by a girl teaching in Bangkok sticks in my mind.
Government inspectors from the Department of Education were due to inspect her school and just before they came, a wonderful collection of books arrived in the language library. She was excited at the prospect of using this new material.
The inspectors came, the school was approved ... and subsequently the books were returned to wherever they had come from. It was all a show.
Thailand is a land based on image where substance is of little importance. What you see on the surface is a facade and if you stay in the country for any length of time you start to understand that the reality of any situation is very different to what is presented.
I was asked at the start of my current job to assess students every three weeks. I only teach some classes once a week, and I only get about 40 minutes actual teaching time. The classes have almost 50 students. Therefore, I have to individually assess each of 50 students every two hours. It's ridiculous.
I complied but I haven't been very happy about this and wondered if I could get it changed next term. I don't think so. I found myself in hot water last week for not assessing students regularly enough, can you believe? What's all this about?
It all boils down to image again. If the students have lots of marks at the end of term this looks good. I was even told I could add marks that I had just made up. What about substance?
Substance doesn't count. No one has ever told me what they wanted taught, or how they wanted me to teach. No one has ever asked or commented about my teaching; or commented about how (or if) the students are improving.
What goes on in the classroom doesn't seem to matter as long as the assessment folder is full of marks at the end of term. It's image over substance.
I lost my last job because of the Thai obsession with image. The new rector of the university decided the best way to improve things was to ensure all lecturers had a long string of qualifications. Did it matter if they were useless teachers? No, not at all, as long as they had enough qualifications.
There was a job opening at my faculty and - based on my previous performance - I was offered it. I accepted. But then they asked for my CV, which went away to some office in an ivory tower somewhere within the university, and all of a sudden they didn't want me any more. I was never told why but I know why.
What I found last year is that you can't argue or try to make Thais look at this approach logically. Their value system is all about image and appearance and you can't tell them otherwise.
A complete tosser who is useless, who has no real-world experience, and who has spent his whole life in academia getting lots of qualifications will always be regarded higher in Thailand than someone who knows his stuff and has real-world experience, yet doesn't have the same qualifications.
It's image over substance every single time.
What's the situation in Thailand regarding software piracy? Thailand is on the Priority Watch List (PWL) because of its reputation as a centre of piracy. This obviously isn't very desirable so moves have been made to improve Thailand's image - I stress 'image'.
A special web site was set up and the official line is that piracy will be stamped out using a zero tolerance approach. That is the official line and it sounds great. This is all about image again.
Yesterday, I bought a small netbook computer. I've had my eye on one of these for a while but was waiting for the right one. The early ones I saw had poor specs and the quality didn't look great. I have always used IBM ThinkPads so when Lenovo released a netbook I thought it was the right time to buy.
I got a good price and buying in Thailand means getting a Thai keyboard, which is an advantage for me when I want to type in Thai. It was a new machine and it looked pretty clean out of the box. How wrong I was.
I spent 12 hours yesterday trying to get the thing to work. I had lots of problems installing my own software and there were lots of strange messages. When I researched fixes for the problems I found that a lot of the basic operating system functions didn't work.
After some more research I discovered the root of the problem. The machine I bought comes from the factory with Linux installed because it's cheaper. However, most users (including me) want Windows so the shop had installed an unlicensed, illegal version of Windows XP Professional. But they hadn't done a very good job.
It was a real hack and this was why I saw so many problems. I took it back today and asked them to replace it with a later model that has a factory-installed legal version of Windows XP. I told them very clearly I want the replacement machine to be in the same state as it left the factory, with no Thai-ware installed.
A few years ago, computer shops in Thailand loaded up computers with illegal software before they were sold. As a result of the piracy clampdown, this doesn't happen anymore. However, piracy is still rife and when I bought the machine yesterday the assistant asked me if I wanted any software installed.
They don't install pirated software on display machines any longer but add all this stuff as a kind of after-sales service.
The bottom line is that on the surface things seem to have improved in Thailand in this respect, but all that has happened is that it has gone underground and out of view.
I took a computer to be repaired last year but the actual repair centre was hidden away from the main shop. When I asked why I was told it was because a lot of activity at the repair centre is illegal. The main shop stays clean that way and maintains a good image.
When I was discussing a hard drive replacement with them I was asked what software I wanted. I could have asked for whatever I wanted and it would all have come for free - pirated, of course. The local markets are full of pirated software, CDs, DVDs and computer games; and there isn't even an attempt at those places to hide what goes on.
A correspondent has been asking questions about teaching English in Thailand and is concerned about all the officially stated requirements. He thinks these will prevent him from getting a job.
The reality is that if a language institute wants to hire a foreigner, they will be able to get all the paperwork to do this quite legally using their contacts. If you have the right contacts in Thailand, and grease enough palms, you can get anything done.
The official regulations are there to present a good image but they don't actually mean anything. You have to understand how things actually work in Thailand.
Thailand is a wonderful country for a vacation. Equally, it's a great place to live if you don't need to work or don't need to get things done. The ideal situation is to be based in Thailand but to be able to travel abroad (Singapore maybe) to buy anything or get anything done.
When you find yourself spending the whole time in Thailand and having to deal with this BS continually, it can get a little frustrating.