American Insensitivity

Its been a while since I have had a rant about some of the others teachers. So today seems a good one after what happened.

We have 5 pcs in the staffroom. Four of which the teachers use and one for the Thai assistants. They are both female and relatively young – mid / early 20s. One of them in particular has really good English, as in she understands about 90% of what we talk about, can make a very good guess of another 5% and will make a reasonable stab at the rest.

For most of today, the internet access was down. But around lunchtime Cleric found out that the pc used by our thai assistants still had access. It seems that the school system administrators have been playing around with the network settings to deny us access. Why this is, I have no idea. Maybe its one of these things they are doing to show even more that they don’t want us or they need the bandwidth for something or whatever I have no idea. Anyway, Cleric starts complaining about it and how "we need our porn" and "fucking this" and "fucking that" and on and on. In some ways a bit understandable if it was just the guys who had been around, after all, I am not adverse to a bit of juicy language at times.

The trouble is that the two Thai assistants were there and very much in earshot.

But it gets worse. As you may remember, Cleric is an ex IT guy, so what does he do? He changes the network settings of on one pc so he can get on the internet. He of course doesn’t offer to do it for anyone else. Nah, that would mean he was thinking of someone else for a change. When someone else from his teaching group saw that, he asked Cleric to change the settings on another pc. Fair enough. Then the fun begins. This other teacher started surfing and opened up a web site that had… well err…. pictures that could only be described as porn. So, Cleric saw this and went to the same site. Now to the bit that gets me into the disbelieving stage. They were on two ajoining pc’s with one of our printers in between. Using the printer at that time was one of our Thai assistants. It just so happens that one of the models has a name similar to our assistant. They then unbelievably make a loud comment about the similarity.

So lets recap. At lunchtime in the staffroom ( admittedly all male teachers ), which both Thai staff and students sometimes come into, two teachers were looking at porn while our two young female assistants were in the office, not only that, they were looking at it on two pcs while she was using a printer in between them!

Sheer and absolute stupity!!!

It gets worse. Our boss – the FUD - actually saw that and was laughing about it afterwards.

OK, lets review again. He sees two teachers, looking at porn while a female Thai assistant is beside a pc and he thinks it’s a joke.

I do not know, if he has actually spoken to or intending to speak to these two or not. But, I mean for gods sake, how about some discipline?

How about some common sense? How about some thought for the feeling of
a) the setting – during the day where students, Thai teachers and administrators could come in
b) the setting – where our two young female staff are in the office
c) the setting – where one of them is actually BESIDE the pc where they are looking at porn
d) not swearing in front of women – I know that’s a bit old fashioned but…

Unfortunately, this is not an isolated incident of Cleric lack of thought and feeling for others. A few weeks ago, he was complaining about having to live in an apartment that costs 10,000 baht a month to one of the other teachers over in one area of the office. Just listening to him whine was bad enough, but, he was sitting at the Thai assistants desk and one of them was sitting there.

So to recap, he was complaining about having to live in a hovel that costs as much per month as the girl gets in her monthly salary ( if not more ). I mean how would you like it if some fat arsed foreigner who gets 4 times your salary complaining about having to live in some “poor” place that costs your monthly salary. I know I wouldn’t like it, but she is far too polite to complain.

What she must say in private, I have no idea but I can guess it wont be good. All these rich falang who dont care what they say or do, look at porn....... Thank you for making the stereotypical English teacher image stronger than ever.

The sooner this guy fucks off back to yank land with his little trophy girlfriend the better. Apparently the plan is they will live in an area where there are lots of Thais and she will teach Thai. Hmmm. Potential problem here I think. Perhaps if there are lots of Thai people they can already speak Thai? There is a great suspicion that basically once she gets over there and finds out that there are far more handsome, just as rich and thinner Americans, he could be in for a very miserable time. If this sounds like jealousy, I suppose in a little way it is as I don’t have a regular girlfriend and seen how she licks an ice cream ;) but it sure saves a lot of hassle in other ways!!

Anyway, back to the topic. I struggle to find the ways in which what happened was so wrong. Fuckwit.