Changing times . . . if only attitudes would change, too . . .
Posted by Andrew | Filed under Gripes
Pursuant to a theme in a previous post below, I did eventually lash out on a new (more comfy) seat on which to park my Rear End, after the Boss asked me to stay for another year (why? I still haven't a clue), and so I am sitting here, wayyyyyyyyyyyyy after midnight on a Sunday morning (i.e. it was Saturday when I sat down), thinking about something that my editor back in Stevenage, England, said in his e-mail today. :irked:
Basically, his premise is this: at some point in the future, Andrew will become tired of EFL teaching in the Far East and think seriously about going home. And when he does this, what will he do? At this point, which is embarrasingly early in the course of tonight's diatribe, we must diverge somewhat; or, as in the Manowar song: "Well, then, I must take you back with me, a long way in time . . ." :sherlock:
When I first made contact with my editor, I had had a bust-up with my old boss (who actually threatened to cut my throat in front of witnesses, for no greater sin than crossing part of a former roof, which was being painted with flooring material at the time . . . but whose idea was it to put the chemical store up there in the first place? Answers on a postcard, please . . . :whistle: ) and stormed out of the job in a huff, to be replaced by a young girl graduate chemist at a lower rate. Some five months later, I had a series of telephone calls and ended up back in Cardiff (where I had been a biology student many years before), working for the Ministry of Defence. The place I worked for was factually little better, but I made contact with the man who was to become the editor of a series of articles which were published in America and Germany, and later of my first book, which was published about a month after I arrived in Taiwan in 2002. It is he of whom I speak tonight.
While I was working on finalising the book for publication (I finished the index only two days before flying out from Heathrow!), I suggested to him that someone like myself, with my experience and training, plus a range of computer skills, would be perfect as a typesetter because I was not a "generalist" but actually had a good understanding of the field. This idea was "pooh-poohed" (as he would say), and was one of the things that persuaded me that risking everything changing my career for teaching English in East Asia was perhaps not such a bad idea after all. 💡
The paradox is that now, some four years later, this same person has actually suggested that someone like myself would be perfect as a typesetter or a scientific editor! I was so shocked :eyes: that I decided to write here, rather than suddenly vent my spleen in an e-mail back to him. I remember pointing out to him at the time that I had obtained training for Aldus PageMaker, locally and at my own expense; that I had been using things like Serif PagePlus, Adobe and (yes, even) Word for ages, and had all the technical know-how not only of these things but also the possible fields in which the original authors would have been working, and I felt that this was justified because you cannot always expect these things from a generalist typesetter. As it happened, his customary typesetter had married some time previously to a chain-smoking, self-employed repairer and restorer of cars, and only some three weeks into their marriage, he had keeled over and died of a heart attack. So she was effectively forced to work through what should have been a mourning period for a number of her customers (as she was also self-employed), and I could have lightened her load for the publisher if they had so wanted. But no. 😡
And this is what I consider to be the real "Story of My Life". I have a strange, curious and varied range of skills and experience which, in an ideal world, would surely translate into Earning A Fortune. :wizard: But it has never turned out like that. 😥 Instead, I have worked for execrable bosses in terrible conditions, being the essential but unappreciated "lubricant" which basically allowed the places to function more effectively than before. Why? Because the roles were unique. When I was helping to commission the laboratory and develop the analytical methods at the power station in 1993-4 (and I was recalled for this twice later on), there had prior to that time only been one other Flue Gas Desulphurisation plant attached to a coal-fired power station in England (at Drax in Yorkshire, if you must know), and some of the things we were doing were almost untested.
Later, I worked for the electroplating and anodising company in my home town of Leicester, and they had never had a "proper" chemist before. When I arrived and analysed the chemical systems and stabilised them, they were immediately saving a fortune, as their passivating solutions for zinc were being thrown away every few days because, guess what, they were pH-sensitive and surprise, surprise, this was not mentioned in the supplier's data sheets. I wonder why not? (Answers on a postcard, please . . . :whistle: ) . . . I was covered in concentrated acids TWICE at that place and lived to tell the tale. :ninja:
After I left that place, for reasons stated previously, I drifted around for about five months in my hometown (I was actually working nights, and earning a small commission each week for ferrying other workers there and back each night) before that fateful 'phone call which took me back to Cardiff and an almost four-year stint alongside the RAF, in which I had (and lost, as the place was later shut down) my first managerial job, had my own business for a while, but still found myself surrounded by amateurs who did not want to admit that they were and always had been, er, amateurs, who were all of the RAF collective mindset and made sure that the place always had lots of little mines for me to put my innocent feet upon. They shifted me over to the other side of the camp to another laboratory (in the jet building and refurbishment plant) and only a month after I arrived there, told us all that it, too, would be closing. My mind was made up; I'm gettin' outta here! 😡
I had taken an Introductory TEFL course back in 1995 (actually during another period of unemployment), and decided that it would be nice to teach English in Japan; I had seen Richard Chamberlain in James Clavell's "Shogun" on the BBC many years previously, and had been surprised at the time that after about six or seven weeks, I could actually follow what the Japanese actors were saying! Clearly, Japanese could not be all that hard to learn, and as there seemed to be few other challenges left for me, I thought that teaching English in Japan to support myself, and learning their language as I did so, would be wonderful. I won't go into any detail of the debacle that followed, but my travels took me to Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan and Korea, which is where I am now for my third consecutive year. I have learned some Japanese, Korean and Mandarin Chinese, and I feel that as a person, I now have a better understanding of many things I hardly knew before.
But there seems to be a sentiment afoot that Andrew must go home. Why? I am over 40 and everywhere you go, people in this age-group are discriminated against, except perhaps in politics, where old age and stupidity (and a guaranteed pay cheque) seem to go hand in hand. So my editor has put his fingers to his well-worn keyboard and suggested that if I go back to Blighty, perhaps I might care to do precisely the things he was happy to dismiss four years ago. :insane:
Well, you can imagine how I feel ( :rolleyes: ) . . . times change, but peoples' attitudes do not. Everyone you meet has a mind-set forged in their times and experiences, and they happily fall into the reprehensible habit of being prescriptive in their notions of what others should do, and how they should live their lives, at the drop of a soiled handkerchief. Should a man be chained to a laboratory bench all his life in a low-paid, low-esteem job, or take a few years out and look around a bit? Judge for yourself. I will only respond myself by saying that historically, great improvements in the lot of mankind generally arise when people break out of old thinking, and see the new target. :wizard:
So I am spending another sleepless night tapping away at this little keyboard and venting my spleen, my utter frustration at the diabolical rescidivism of people. You can't teach an old dog new tricks; you can't change the habits of a lifetime; there's no fool like an old fool. Screw them all! I'm staying RIGHT WHERE I AM and I will be myself, and continue to grow in the new knowledge I find all around me. I urge others to do the same, and break out of the monotony and fatalism of the rescidivist masses. Long live freedom! :star:
fukudasan
