Next Tuesday 

I spend the morning at home going through the pages of Ajarn.com and trying to fill some of the gaps in my schedule. I make two phone calls. One is to a school on Sukhumwit 58 that is looking for…wait for it…..English language instructors.  I just love that. As though avoiding the word ‘teacher’ is going to conjure up an image of anything different to standing in front of six bored shitless teenagers holding a well-thumbed Interchange.  I had already sent my resume to the director so he was expecting my call. After the traditional pleasantries, he goes on to ask me about my resume itself.

“I see that your C.V states that you have an interest in English grammar. Can you tell me the difference between a countable and an uncountable noun?”

I immediately reply with “Good heavens man, it says I’m interested, not f***ing obsessed” It becomes crystal clear that this is not a job for me.

The second phone call is to a woman who has advertised for ‘teacher wanted for casual conversation’ She picks up the phone and I ask her for more details. “Yes, we are three middle-aged Thai women with big hair and faux pearls. We want to sit around an expensive-looking dining table with a farang teacher and make the most appalling grammar mistakes while at the same time pawing each other’s silk dresses and cackling raucously. For this we are willing to cross your palm with the princely sum of 400 baht” I ask her if I can have some time to think about it. She reluctantly agrees.

On the bus journey into work, I sit next to a pretty young girl who is clutching a copy of the Interchange textbook. She’s obviously on her way to an English class. I can sense that she so desperately wants to start a conversation, but she’s at the distinct disadvantage of having studied from Jack Richard’s hallowed text. She spends the whole journey wondering if “Hey dude, how are they hanging?” is really the most appropriate conversational gambit.

 Back in school and time to pick up my photocopying. We have a marvelous photocopying system. The teacher decides how many copies of a certain page they need, fills in a photocopying request form and leaves it on the receptionist’s desk. The following day you walk into the school and find that the request form is exactly where you left it. A truly wonderful system. And why may you ask should a receptionist spend her valuable time fiddling around with an archaic photocopying machine when the time can be spent calling up boyfriends and manicuring her fingernails.

So after an hour or so of fishing jammed-up paper from the machine’s internal workings, I can at last retire to the sanctuary of the teacher’s room. Only to find that the maid is sick and the communal coffee spoon has gone missing.