Friday after

This morning there’s a teachers’ meeting on the agenda. Twelve teachers of varying financial status and each with the weight of the world on their shoulders sit around a circular table waiting for the arrival of the director of studies. In the middle of the table, there is a jug of iced water and the obligatory Dunkin’ Donuts party pack containing 12 donuts for 109 baht. I never look forward to teachers’meetings, but when the one teacher I really don’t get along with dips in and takes the double chocolate, I look forward to them even less.

Being the perfect gentleman, I let everyone else select their choice of donut and find that I’m left with the one covered in pink icing sugar. A donut which would have no doubt made me very happy had I been seven years old, wearing a knitted V-neck sweater and a guest at Tracey Hargreave’s birthday party.  

The Director of Studies arrives unshaven and hungover. “Good night at the Cowboy was it?”

“Ay, not bad. There are some great looking birds in that Titty Twister bar. Sorry ladies I shouldn’t be saying that, hahahaha”

He smiles through crooked yellow teeth. Nothing like a cheap sexual comment in front of the female teaching staff to really break the ice.

The female teaching staff, it must be said, are used to it by now. They are used to having their arses playfully slapped while they’re bent over the photocopier. They are used to eating one of those cylindrical ice lollies and one of the male staff saying “I thought you’d be able to get all that in your mouth in one go”

They are used to hearing teacher’s room banter littered with references to broken condoms, padded bar-bills, and regulation closing times. Oh, they are used to all that.

Cheap sexual innuendo aside, today we are 13 professionals gathered in one room for the sole purpose of improving the standards of the school. There are over a dozen points to discuss, debate, analyze, and comment on. Some teachers are not filling in their pedagogical cards correctly. I’m not really bothered about that. I’m only concerned as to why we can’t refer to them as attendance sheets. Is it that the term ‘attendance sheet’ isn’t stuffy, overbearing and academic enough? The DOS drones on. “When you prepare a lesson, don’t forget your 3 P’s – Production, Practice, and the other one”

I personally prefer to have two sections in a lesson plan – what I’m going to teach, and what they’re going to learn. It’s really that simple.

I can’t be bothered to listen to the rest of the meeting. I don’t think anyone can. After all, today is payday.

I pick up 34, 652 baht after tax deductions and a contribution to the school health insurance scheme. This is what makes the job worthwhile. It’s Friday night, your wallet’s stuffed with Thai baht, and the world’s your oyster. Come 9pm I’m sitting in an outside bar at Clinton Plaza surrounded by ladies and lady drinks. Tonight I’m not a teacher, I’m Hugh Hefner, Antonio Banderas and any other fanny magnet you care to mention. The girls are laughing hysterically at my crappy jokes and appalling Thai and I sit there like the lord of the manor – the king of all I survey. “Another drink Lek? Get yourself one in” I peel off another 500 baht bill from my sweaty wad. Tomorrow’s another day. Live for the moment.