Dear Diary

I get a few strange emails but when I received one recently that offered me what the sender described as a 'once in a lifetime opportunity' and a ' a never to be repeated offer', I almost deleted it until I saw the email had been sent from a well known language school in Bangkok.

This teacher - we'll call him Paul - offered you, the lucky readers the chance to gain an insight into his daily routine. Last week I met Paul in an unlit supermarket car park in central Bangkok, he handed me a photocopied 'Animals of the World' wordsearch with a barely legible scrawl on the back. Having spent a couple of minutes pouring over it and deciding that it must be written in some form of code, Paul apologised, took back his shopping list and presented me with the first manuscript. ( Which will be available to buy on Ebay within the next 24 hours )

Now, we meet up on a daily basis to discuss the latest discount on yoghurts ( they were 12 baht but today are only 11, I knew I should have hung on an extra 24 hours. I swear Tesco have installed some form of mind reading device in the swish electronic doors), however it's a shame that you cant get decent cheese at a low price and for him to hand over his ramblings from the previous day.

Week 1

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Week 3

Week 4

Monday

Monday

Subject: Website comments
Date: 16 Feb 2002
From: < ******@thailand.com >
To: <ian@ajarn.com>

I am writing with reference to one of the recent additions to the ajarn.com website. The Daily Diary. What is your purpose of doing this?

The writer seems intent on displaying his own egotistical ramblings and the cost is discrediting the English teaching profession as a whole. Surely it is your duty as owner (?) or the person responsible for the site as a whole to draw the line somewhere.

In Thailand we academics realise that the English teaching profession is not as well developed as in some other nations. However, Thai professionals are trying to change this. Ideally, we would like schools, universities and especially language schools to join with us in advancing the cause. Thai TESOL has been in existence for many years and yet I doubt if individuals such as the person responsible for the diary has heard of it or not.

Please be more constructive next time. Education is not all about bars and girls for the vast majority of your audience. At least, for the future of Thailand, I hope not. As for the writer, if I were in your position I would encourage him to return to a profession that was fulfilling as he obviously doesn't enjoy his current position.

And We've also received a couple from from farang educators in Bangkok, such as the one below:

Dear Ian,

I would like to re-iterate the comments of the Thai professor.
I find the diary of the foreign teacher totally pathetic, as do may of the other teachers I work with here at ********* school in Bangkok. We cannot understand why you bother to include the 'rantings' of his life on your site, which on the whole is very professional and informative.

The guy writes about Thailand and his students, in the most patronizing manner, almost bordering on racism. As the Thai professor states, if he is that unhappy and despondent about what he is doing, he should do his students, and Thailand as a whole, a favor and simply go home.
Other teachers, who are working here, very much enjoy living in Thailand and teaching Thai students. As for the teachers at my school, we were all recruited by a university in Australia and hold education degrees.
I work as a professional and expect to be respected as one. The writer of the diary is the type of person who makes the profession look bad and appears to be in Thailand for all the wrong reasons.
Go home and be pathetic in your own country. Do the Thais a favour.

Sam.

In the diary writer's defense I have to add that the life he describes is probably one that more teachers here can relate to than the ones enjoyed by the writers of the above emails. No one's saying the diary writer is a role model or that he for one moment thinks that he's God's gift to teaching. Why doesn't he pack it all in? - maybe he'll let us know in a future article?