Are We Nuts or Just Collecting Them?

 I wasn't going to blog today but I was sent an email that riled me up enough to post anew. Besides, I only have one post in Feb so far. 

The email? It was a job offer to teach English online to kids 6-13 years old. Classes of 1 to 18 kids. The pay? 12-18 dollars an hour. They post the pay as $2500 US. Take out the old calcutator here...

So a teacher could make 12 bucks to teach 18 6-year-olds for an hour. That works out to 52 hours a week or 10.4 hours a day if you only want to work 5 days a week TEACHING 6-YEAR-OLDS! Now this is teaching so add to that a good amount of lesson planning and you're up to 65-70 hours a week CONSERVATIVELY! BlingABC is the name of this cuntpany. It's a subsidiary of New Oriental Group (and then in brackets New Oriental Group is written in Chinese). Remembering that this is China, let's say they only charge 180 RMB or 25 bucks an hour for online English classes for your 6-year-old.  That's the minimum you will find there so it's a darn good deal even in China. So the scumbags at BlingABC are making $450 and paying the person who does most of the work 12 of those dollars. No wonder they want you to work 52 hours a week! The asshole owners can buy a lot of bling with that! Your company is making 37.5 times what they are paying you. In other words you make 2.67% of the profit. Do you reckon the teacher is doing less than 3% of the work in this scenario? Oh the management and owners will have their speeches about business expenses, overhead, and all those words they make up in the business world to make us think businesspeople actually work as hard as they say, but they're snowing you. 

The worst part is somebody is going to take this job. Which is just gonna encourage these analrapists to keep on doing what they're doing. This is one of the things that has made it so hard to find a good ESL teaching job. Teachers are nice. It's our weakness and business is all about exploiting weakness, am I wrong? Am I naive cuz I think I can remember when business wasn't like this. Employers are just saying, "Fuck fair wages, long-term employees, ethics, let's just screw the worker. EVERYBODY ELSE IS DOIN' IT." Bunch of lemmings. Does nobody remember that bridge our mother's told us about? The one that we shouldn't jump off just because everybody else is jumping off it? Or do mothers not say that anymore? Maybe not Chinese mothers. 

And just to put a cherry on top of this story, it was Serious Teachers Job Alerts who sent me the email. If they keep sending me offers like this, I think they need to change their name to Are You Serious??? Teachers Job Alerts. Or maybe even insert an F-bomb in there...

This being part of the reason why I haven't yet put an ocean between my work and my home and native land for... geez it's been pretty much a year now, brings up the question of how my work has been going here in Canada. I have blogged a bit about that, and it hasn't been positive, but I have to say, although I'm still not settled into a good, full time job yet, work is rounding into shape. And in just under a year's time. Way to be Canada!!! I'd say it'll be a couple more months, or maybe a bit more, before I finally start working full time for a decent wage here. The problem is, will I be happy?

I've been on a bit of an Asia kick here lately. I ate at Jollybee the other day and shopped for Chinese, Japanese and Korean stuff. I've got the ingredients for Sam Gyup Sal in the fridge/freezer here and I think I'll be giving that a whirl for dinner on the weekend with Rob and Terri. I dunno if they'll like it but honestly, who doesn't like sam gyup sal???

Yummy dog? I took this at the Japanese 100 Yen store here. It's called something else but I forget the name. Things are more than 100 yen too. I didn't buy these but I thought about it. lol. For those rare occasions when I'm craving poshintang...

That's the grill I'm gonna buy to give Terri and Rob a taste of my Korean "heritage." Ar ar. 

That's what it looks like only I'll have garlic, mushrooms, and kimchi grillin' on there too. 

I've caught myself thinking wistfully of life overseas quite a bit lately. Maybe it's the fact that I always had enough money to go out and GET some food like this while I lived there. Or maybe I'm missing friends. I think it has a lot to do with something I never thought I'd say though: I don't fit into my culture any more in a lot of ways. 

When I'm on the bus I look out the window and see all the people driving their cars and think of all the money they have to pay for their cars, fuel, repairs, insurance, and of course licensing I get scared. Literally fear rushes over me. It's not the expense and it's not the thought of driving or even flunking the driver's test again. Although those driving examiners are monstrous creatures! I think it's the fear of how a car would force me to stay in one place and likely at one job for an extended period of time. I was recently reading Somerset Maugham's "Razor's Edge" and Larry, the main character reads a lot, travels a lot, explores a lot, thinks a lot, and does a lot because he never weighs himself down with possessions of any kind. Even marriage is mentioned as almost as comprehensive an ending as death. 

I'm staying with my brother Rob and sister-in-law Terri and they have a lot of possessions! But they seem comfortable traveling all over the place and leaving their stuff unattended while they're out. Their address is... Their alarm code is... The names of the attack dogs are... 

I think that's great and I envy them for the many trips they've taken and things they've seen that I haven't. More than the pile of possessions. This may be my dilemma. I am not going to be able to acquire enough of a pile of possessions to enable me to do the travelling I'd like to do, and if I did, I don't know if I'd be comfortable leaving my pile of stuff to do that travelling. 

The goal in Canada, and it's the goal of our culture to be honest, is to get that pile of stuff. You need to chain yourself to the country, a location, a job, maybe a spouse and some kids, and a lot of the stuff in your pile in order to accrue enough wealth to explore what life beyond that pile of stuff is like. In the Razor's Edge, Larry had an inheritance or a patronage I think. He gallivanted all over the world on it. He worked too but only for the experience. He much preferred to "loaf." When his wife-to-be heard that, she just couldn't understand it! I totally understood it. Oh for a patronage that allowed me to explore the world and soak in more than the miniscule single piece of the mosaic most are afforded!

I think if I choose to live and work in Canada I'll need to find a way to satisfy myself with that limited view of the whole mosaic. I don't know if I can do that anymore after having seen some of the other pieces. I am hoping a good job with high pay might be encouragement enough but I'm doubtful.

Having said that, it appears that the option of working overseas and making enough money to see the sights, travel, and immerse myself in a few more cultures might be disappearing. The offers I keep seeing are looking more and more like BlingABC's cheap chicanery. 

At any rate, I find out soon if I'll get extended hours at the LINK ESL job I'm doing part-time. If so, I will most likely accept them. If not, I still have a lucrative security offer that will allow me to collect a few nuts and maybe a den in which to squirrel them away. I'll keep you updated dear readers.

Ciao for now.