PeaceBlondie

Well, maybe my honeymoon's over. The big boss, the DI-rector, just proposed increasing my contact teaching hours for next semester from the current 6 or 12, to a whopping 23 hours per week. Nobody will laugh in front of him (there are signs he thinks that he's verrrry important), but they're laughing behind him.

In this same vein, I reminded the two ladies who helped me get hired, "It is extremely difficult to get GOOD farang teachers to work in the provinces for more than a month or two. I have to take more time to teach English because I haven't been doing it for 25 years as you have, and because I'm expected to know all 31 of my students individually, whereas you Thai teachers of English have up to 600 students each. I need lots of time to prepare lesson plans for Math because I've never taught it before, and it took you two months just to find a textbook in English, with no teacher's guide. I teach two entirely different subjects, and you're ###### lucky to mind a native-speaking math teacher anywhere in Thailand. My friends think I'm crazy to work at all, at my age and with my pension. I have enough energy at an older age, than your director has. When's the last time he taught even 17 hours per week? My pension's probably larger than the director's salary. I don't need to do this. The contract says I teach for no more than 18 hours........blah blah blah."

Getting back to the initial point of this thread, and using the subjunctive mood to indicate impossibility: "If Thai school administrators were good at the job of hiring and keeping farang teachers for EP and MEP projects, they'd treat the farang much better, because their SCHOOLS are on the wrong side of the supply and demand curve, even if it is Thailand."

I actually found school very boring and had a short attention span, although I think this had to do with the teachers and content of the classes. I know own my own printing business and have had to spend alot of time teaching and training staff.

Hey Dan75, just come ahead. You could get a job in Chiang Mai for 17,000 baht per month if you do a perfect interview when the schools are desparate.

Do people in the printing business in English-speaking countries have to spell correctly? And do they save ink if their run-on sentences have virtually no punctuation?

I was just wondering.

Maybe because I'm American, I never even notice when an infinitive is split. I do notice, or get confused, when an ADVERB is misplaced, far from the word to which it refers. Which brings up the other sacrosanct question, can a sentence end with a preposition? Yes, if the prep. is part of a phrasal verb, such as "refer to." And some verbs which are normally transitive, such as "refer to...[object]" don't need to always have an object.

Here's my favorite example of properly placing the adverb: HE KISSED HER

Now, place "only" at every place in the sentence, and see how different the meanings are.

Same question any Lesbian Go Go bars in BKK or Pattaya?????

I don't know about those cities, but there's a lesbian bar in Chiang Mai, named Femme Fatale. You might access it through www.chiangmaigayguide.com if that's still working.

3. Good farang teachers are a very rare commodity, and need to be retained. Replacing a good teacher with a bad teacher is lousy educational management.

4. Keeping foreign teachers uninformed causes them to teach your students less effectively. It also causes unhappy parents, which causes YOU a loss of revenue from special programs.

Mai bpen rai, no lo importa nada, it doesn't matter one whit.

BTW, how much is a whit - about a farthing?

There are many more, far more important, things about English composition than worrying about word order when all the words are in the sentence, in places well enough to comphrehend their meaning, unlike this sentence.

English can be communicated whether or not the infinitive is split, and can be mis-communicated either way, also.

Specialists make special rules so they'll be called upon to settle arguments between lesser specialists, when the rest of the populaton needn't know and doesn't care.

phormio, I think Steve was mixing his advice there: how a prospective teacher should look for the right kind of school with its own niche; how the teacher should advise the smartest or richest students, once he's a teacher there; and how the management of the public or private school should market itself and categorize its students.

When you're new in Thailand, even if you read everything on the web including the applicable forums, you still probably won't know enough about the particular schools where you're applying. A franchise isn't the same at all branches; generalizations about govt. matayom schools only go so far, etc.

If you have an interview, try to find out what you can about the school. Of course, ask questions during the interview (not that it helped me much, the first time; it was like being interviewed by deafmutes between their endless stream of overfilled classes).

Which new immigration rulings are you referring to? The salary ones? Or the income and asset ones?

As a government teacher, I don't think the salary minimums apply to me. I don't think the income and asset rules apply to a B visa. Right?

I have. I bought a new bike for cash. Had to go to immigration to verify my residence, and they saw that I had a B visa. The title is in my name only. I did not have to have or show a work permit.

And, in my opinion, anyone who doesn't see that helmets save lives, must be a complete fool.

Wearing a helmet restricts a drivers vision / hearing etc. Don't think so, try wearing a helmet while playing basketball.

This restriction, some believe causes more accidents. Deaths on a motorcycle aren't caused by not wearing a helmet, they are caused by having an accident at usually high speeds with high blood level acohol.

Given a choice, I wear a helmet on the highway at higher speeds, no helmet in town at lower speeds. And absolutely no alcohol. Not a drop.

Bottom line main factor, the governemt has no right to tell me to wear a helmet.

Even many of the Thai cops don't wear helmets, and they are the government. lol

Nemesis, could you give us a real citation for that first quote you had, prior to the "Goldstein Report" which wasn't about whether helmets save lives?

Wearing a helmet only restricts a drivers vision if you are "The Fly" as in Jeff Goldbaum. I have been wearing helmets for the last 150,000 MILES, with vision in only one eye, and I've had no problem with side vision, nor any accidents attributable to it, partly because I use both side mirrors and I turn my neck a lot. Helmets do not restrict vision, period.

Deaths on motorcycles are caused by not wearing a helmet, when you have injuries to the cranium. My best student died 15 february from brain injuries sustained from an accident at ZERO miles an hour; he wore no helmet. But that's just an anecdote to counter your all-inclusive exceptionless statement, which was fecal.

Crashes at unusually high speeds, and at high alcohol blood levels, are even more injurious than hitting the ground at zero miles per hour forward speed (adjusted for the speed of gravity, as your head rushes to the pavement). I fell to the ground in Chiapas, Mexico, with a full face helmet that sustained three serious blows, and had no head injuries.

You need to support your claim that helmets increase the likelihood of having an accident and sustaining a more serious injury. Give us a real, scientific, proper, relevant citation, Nemesis. Mine is called "The Hurt Report." Google that.

Matayom and prathom schools also have an abundance of females, usually middle aged, who are bored with teaching the same thing every year and are prone to gossip. Don't make opinionated statements, esp. negative comments, about coworkers. Lie and say they are all "nice." When the lady walks in with a stunning dress (which they often do) don't just say it's a nice dress, say she looks very good in it. "Sweet mouth" is a better reputation than "black heart."

Steven, excellent, as always. Lots of what you wrote might be considered common sense, even in the West, but it's not obvious until you've been here a while. Likewise, I've worked with almost 40 Thai English teachers now, and we don't discuss lesson plans, methodology, educational philosophy. Not even much about how to evaluate (except at the end of the term, and then it changes with every interpretation). It really doesn't seem to matter much. E.g., once I asked how I should substitute for an absent English teacher. The man next to me said, "just ask the class leader where they are in their text and workbook, and go from there."

Maybe in Bangkok, with a BA and a TEFL cert but little else, they might get $800 per month starting (32,800 baht) for ten months. In the provinces, 25,000. Chiang Mai, 19,000. Then subtract either A) tax of about 900 baht/month; or visa runs every month.

Since we ARE being pedantic, which happens on a subject like grammar or income tax law, let's back up and think about our target audience. This month I was teaching count/non-count to Matayom 2. They're beginners. If I were teaching MA-Tesol grad students who think they understand English, we'd get very pedantic because the students would think it matters. Ernest Hemingway and t.s. eliot probably wouldn't have cared.

Methinks the poster meant "800 to 1,000" American dollars. But a starting salary of 25,000 baht per month is about $615, and in your first year, you might not get 12 paychecks (I got 9). You probably won't be making US$1,000 every month until 2008, unless you already have an M.Ed or its equivalent, in which case you could be making $4,000 in Texas.

It's crazy: the demand for decent teachers is high, but the salary is still low.

Your descriptions of where you live remind me how Texans do it: "Weeel, I live in southwest central Texas, between Buda and Dripping Springs, and my brother lives in far southeast central, where the Piney Woods meets the Big Thicket swamp."

Always keep smiling. Making your voice in tones that are both soft-edged and yet somehow firm (?)

A. Oh, I'm sorry, I can't.

B. I'm not a bank.

D. I already loaned money. Man not pay.

E. No have money for friends. No money for family.

Of course, the last one only works if they don't know what money (assets) you have, or what income streams you have. So, never tell 'em.

Start out in standard English. If that doesn't work, talk Thailish, or a third language that they don't know. If they keep repeating themselves, keep repeating yourself. No. Sorry. No. No. No. No. You can say "no" a thousand times; they might even get tired. But always - keep smiling. You might develop a nervous tick after repeating it the fifth time, and keep the tick going, along with a crooked smile. Drool a little.

Deer missed-her Gaytz,

G its shur nyce 2 fine ally meet missed-her Microsoft.

When Warren Buffet cumz to Bangcock, u"l want to budget another 5000000 baht for the Bentley Mulsanne Turbo R, unles of coarse u preferr the Phantom 6 double cowl cabriolet, or the Lamborghini Murcielago.

Aynd bye th wai, snakestick, did u no that medical expenses kan ron lotz of muny?

Also, did you know that Murcielago is not only the name of a famous Spanish fighting bull, but also the word "bat" in Spanish, whence it is the only word in espanol to contain all 5 five vowels, including a dipthong?

Wells Fargo charges me $3 overall for each ATM withdrawl, so I try to max it out at my daily limit of $300 (12,000 baht). Not sure if they hit me with any foreign currency exchange fee, and the rate looks okay. But if I buy something (goods or services, not cash) with my debit card, they charge me 2%, so I don't use the card for purchases.

It's a great list, as are several other helpful lists that IJWT/Steven has provided in the past year. However, some of them are partially "wish lists," that aren't too practical or real-world for the newcomers, some folks in the provinces, or those who don't already have solid gold authentic credentials.

The crazy national bureaucracy has made it very difficult for any school to do everything legally. So, of course, a non-Thai teacher gets caught in the Catch-22 situations.

The way Thais (even with Master's degrees in education) answer questions, it would take you several hours of interview to get clear answers to all those questions. And the process might brand you as a troublemaker. I'm not sure I know all the answers to that list yet, at either of the schools where I've worked at least one semester.

I got lucky. I didn't ask nearly enough questions before starting at either school, and I hardly got any reliable answers. Somehow, we've muddled through it all, so far. But then, I can afford to get by without some of the perks, and don't have all the same problems that most newcomers have.

Nah, let's not stop; this is more fun than...cleaning septic tanks.

I like hamburger meat, which isn't countable. When they're prepared as a type of meat sandwich, and countable, I like to eat one or two hamburgers.

As for teaching methods in Thailand, the "count" or "noncount" concept seemed to work very well on about 500 Matayom 2 students this month. But I'm new at it, so surely there's a better way. The trouble with the Thai teachers of English is that so many of them are Aristotelian, thinking that the world makes sense if you can just sub-categorize it like some federal lawbook. No - language is a flexible, ambiguous, artistic mode of expression, not a diagram.

and the crackdown is aimed at the penniless, visaless lowlives anyway.

Do you mean the illegal English teachers?

I agree.

Okay, so that's a legitimate criticism of visaless English teachers who are lowlifes, illegal, and penniless. It just doesn't fully apply to MOST of the English teaching foreigners in Thailand. Oh, it's easy, for those of us who have bank accounts and foreign income streams, to get all haughty about those who don't. But Thailand has this weird supply and demand imbalance for foreign EFL teachers. The employers at both private and govt. schools pay the newbies no more than 30,000 baht per month, and then expect them to live on it (without being legal, of course).

But since this is about a visa crackdown - yes, it will probably cause a small percentage of the illegal penniless visaless lowlives who teach English, to leave the Kingdom. And it will make it harder on the illegal but not penniless, not lowlives who teach English, to survive. But, if they time their 30-day (or 90-day) visa runs to the day after payday, they could show 10,000 baht. Even 20,000 would be hard to show, though, if they'd jsut paid thier rent. Maybe some lowlife penniless illegal buddy could lend them 10,000.

...am investigating resources (thai/farang partners) for similar project and hope to succeed sometime near future.

What makes me think a bit pessimistic is not the money necessary to be invested but the patients (50+) facing the thai climate/humidity

That is in fact a huge difference to retirement/nurse care - holiday homes already existing in southern europe (and - btw - making unbelievable high profit)...

Well, high heat and humidity didn't stop the state of Florida from becoming a retirement mecca. South Texas and other places, also (although Arizona is extremely hot and dry). Air conditioning solves all that. And the warm winters should convince lots of people north of the 35th parallel to "come on down!"

But if you're trying to market the retirement homes to Europeans who don't know how to battle heat and humidity, that's a real problem, especially if they've never been to Thailand.

This discussion is really impressive and informative. Indo-Siam and p brownstone, thanks so much.

Steve, about those overland trade corridors you mentioned - how do goods go from Kunming, in southern China, to centrral Thailand? Does it require new superhighways? What about rail shipping, intermodal transport, and fully modernized intermodal shipping ports? I don't see freight trains going from Chiang Mai, southward.

brownstone, your sobering analysis is a counterweight to Steve's optimism, and you both stated your positions well. Nothing lasts forever, even cold November rain and benevolent leaders.

Without seeing the figures, it makes sense that a 60-something Western retiree, with a pension of more than 80,000 baht per month, would see the difference in costs for retirement homes.

The retirement scene in Florida is very expensive as you get older, because most of the costs are related to labor, which is many times greater than labor or construction labor costs in Thailand.

I think that my mother had to pay US$25,000 for a little apartment that had all kinds of full services, and that guaranteed her full care for life. They moved her into their "hospital" when she got cancer. But she paid something like $1,400 per month to live there (maintenance fees and 3 meals per day). You could do all that in Thailand for a fraction.

On Friday morning, Thai time, I withdrew 12,000 baht from my Wells Fargo account in the USA. Cost: $294.10 plus the $3 transaction fee! That's a rate of 40.80:1, and the $3 fee brings it down about 41 satang, to 40.4:1.

Does this mean you'd have done better taking it out every 25 hours at 12,000 baht per withrawl? Hmm, I think I'll keep doing that for the time being.