Threats to terminate

After three days of not responding to my ultimatum regarding lesson cancellations, I gave my wannabee Canadians the bullet yesterday - and surprise, surprise, the minute I did, they responded immediately, claiming that they had only just arrived back in Ho Chi Minh, that they understood my situation ( which they clearly didn't), and would I recommence teaching when I returned from the UK. Hilariously, it seemed not to have crossed their minds that their unilateral decision to cancel lessons (unpaid) for the month of August (without notice, as they have meetings) might not go down well, particularly given the contents of my previous email. If there's one thing that the Vietnamese do need to learn in business it is that short termism ultimately doesn't pay ( unless your in it for the long run). So hopefully my final lesson will be something to that effect. I guess in a society where the majority of people have had to live hand to mouth for many years these practices are going to prevail. However this lot are middle class enough to know better.

That aside. I've finished my book on Vietnamese history and am full of questions. I was talking to my lovely, angelic friend Uyen the other evening about what Vietnam was like in the post war period 75-77. As she described Saigon at the time, she began to giggle and she recalled how as ten year olds they would all cry as the Viet Cong burst into their class rooms looking for the sons and daughters of collaborators, brandishing Kalashnikovs in their faces and telling them that if they didn't stop crying that they were going to shoot them. That she managed to do this with a nostalgic "how silly we all were" tone of voice and affectionate giggle at the thought of them all, children, crying together, lent the recollection a charmingly, surreal grace.

Just imagine: " How funny it was. The day we all cried when the Viet Cong threatened to shoot us"! Fantastic.

Just makes me wish that the Viet Cong could still muster the manpower from time to time, to make similar inspirational visits to some of the schools around Sloane Square and Knightsbridge.

Then they could justify their Chelsea Tractors.

Malingering students

Things have gone very quiet this week. My students seem to have either been sick or indisposed and I've had to issue my Canadians with an ultimatum regarding their tuition. Having started with four of them I've ended up with a situation whereby only one of them (the admirable Phuong) has any genuinel desire to improve her English. Her fellow remaining student Dong, seems to have become increasingly reluctant to learn anything other than the bare minimum to get him through his interview - and lessons are being cancelled at short notice (and not paid for) - hence the ultimatum. In a way I don't blame Dong because he has to have lessons after a long day at work and his only motivation to learn comes in the form of his chiding, hypocritical wife. Although I'd like to continue to teach Phuong I've realised that the whole clan comes as one package and I think that I'd prefer to wipe the slate clean and start again with students who genuinely want to learn. When they don't, you find as a teacher that you're revising the same things time and again which becomes a frustrating, monotonous bore. Anyway having had two consecutive cancellations and a garbled telephone excuse, I'm giving them until tomorrow to respond to an email that I sent them yesterday, explaining that they will be paying for cancellations in future. After that, if I still haven't heard anything, they're history.
This week I conduct my final private lesson with Cu'c and Nguyet until I return to teaching in September, as well as my final lesson with my Friday morning students before they break for their late summer holiday. I'm also supposed to be teaching my catering students again, but they're having difficulty recruiting. The last I heard, they had 18 students when they need 40 and the course commencement date has been deferred to 24th August, which I still think may be a little optimistic. So, as a consequence I've had lot's of time to read my book on Vietnamese history and to this end I found a fantastic quote from a Vietnamese General called Vo Nguyen Giap who wrote the following at the height of the "American War":

"People should not be overawed by the power of modern weapons. It is the value of human beings which in the end will decide victory"

I wonder if that quote appears in the Little Book of US Foreign Policy Successes.

A lovely thought

I was chatting to a Vietnamese girl a couple of days ago, on the subject of perspiration and how we "foreigners" sweat like crazy the minute we begin to move - and yet somehow the Saigonese Cyclo riders who ferry sunburnt lumps of Caucasian TREX around the city barely break sweat, if at all. I suggested to her that we were designed differently and that I (in particular) was designed for the colder climbs of Europe, where she might not fare so well. She gave the matter some thought and then shook her head and disagreed with me, informing me with a gentle authority, that it was due to the fact that we Europeans were hairier and have bigger holes in our skin that caused our waters to escape. So there you go. It's the fact that were more porous that causes us to melt in this tropical heat. How could I possibly disagree?

Exams

Political correctness is a stranger to Vietnam. As the mid summer term nears it's end and the late summer holidays are about to begin, it's now the exam season. Last night I had to give the kids their English Conversation examination which was a completely new experience as far as I'm concerned. I was given virtually no steer as to what was required until two hours before the exam, so I ( logically) based my questions upon what we'd been studying since the last exams. When I arrived, my co teacher, the lovely, gracious and sensitive My Le presented me with a sheet with all of the names of my students and an accompanying number. Such preparation and examination aids are essential in a country where 90% of the population is called Nguyen and names read back to front, in terms of our own naming systems. My Le informed me that she would call out to me of the number ascribed to each child and I would merely have to give them a mark and a comment upon completion of the exam dialogue. And so we proceeded, me interviewing one student after another, testing their use of the tenses that they had learned, as well as the sharpness of their pronunication and sentence construction. Some of their answers were fantastic. One of the questions I asked was "What would you like to be when you leave school"? One girl came straight back with amazing certainty that she wanted to be a business women. I then asked her "why"? And "what line of business"? To see how far she could go. She decisively informed me that she hadn't decided, but that she "loved money" and that she wanted to have a big house and a big car and judging from the assuredness of her performance I have no doubt that she will achieve her aims. I had 25 kids to interview and then suddenly at around number 22 My Le called out a number that had already been interviewed according to my sheet. Nightmare. Because I didn't know all of the kids names, I didn't know how the hell we were going to work out where the mistake had been made ( no doubt mine) and who had been ascribed someone else's marks. I therefore set about trying to resolve this. I told My Le that I wanted to do a role call just to match faces to names to marks. Fortunately we detected it quickly. A girl called Nghe, whom I'd recorded at number four, but should have been at number 5. I then decided to double check our system to be absolutely sure and so as not to cause a riot. Then My Le in the nicest possible way and in order to be as helpful as possible said "Nghe. Mr Peter .You know Nghe.......the big fat girl who sits at the front of the class. She's outside somewhere". At this point I was hoping that Nghe was a long, long way away and praying that she wouldn't walk in imminently. "The one who sits over there" I said quickly, pointing to Nghe's normal seating place. "Yes, yes Mr Peter" said My Le nodding frantically, obviously relieved " The big fat one" and was then joined by a chorus of students all nodding wisely and looking at me saying 'The big fat one..who sits over there", some outstretching their arms, just in case I hadn't got the point. The poor girl. She's not that big and not that fat. Big by Vietnamese standards, but not our own. Anyway I tried to move the whole thing on as quickly as possible before she walked back in and was enormously relieved that she chose to do so 5 minutes after this toe curling little discussion. I also have a girl in my class who would be classified as a dwarf ( or whatever very small people are called these days) and all of the kids take huge delight in trying to get me to get her to write answers to questions written on the board that are impossible for her to reach -doubled up with laughter all the while. On such occasions, even My Le takes the opportunity to chuckle along with them. But I have to say the recipients seem to take it all in good heart and seem psycologically robust enough not to need to run quivering into the arms of a nearby shrink. It's led me to the conclusion that neuroses are a bit of a luxury invented and afforded only by the west. Anyway, the exam then ended with me handing the sheet contain the marks back to My Le, who was instantly submerged by a shoal of eager little, black maned piranhas, all desperate to know their marks and she duly obliged ( I don't think she had any option), while I took the opportunity to hot foot it out of the door before they began to cross examine me.

Alchemy

Until this week I thought I'd got to grips with what the rainy season was about, only to discover that this is where the business end of thing really kicked off. The weather has gone from one enormous downpour a day, to a situation whereby most of the day Saigon is under seige from lashing showers and wickedly relentless thunder storms. Last night, the lightning was flashing every three to five seconds for a period of three hours or so with a cacophany instantaneous thunder following instantly in it's wake. It really does feel as though venturing in these conditions is dangerous. I've just returned home from a morning of assessing Teachers for TEFL and then teaching my two Teacher Cu'c and Nguyet at Thang Long and have been drenched by one such downpour. The teaching assessment was hilarious today. I had one Australian and one American, both of whom were highly amusing to watch. The Australian was a picture of studied "eccentricty". The type of person whose prefabricated foibles you deliberately ignore, thereby forcing them into the horrible situation of being forced to bring them to your attention. The American was like something from another planet. If anyone has seen the self defence instructor on the film Napoleon Dynamite, this "teacher" was his double. He prowled the front of the room like a pitbull on steroids, his gesticulations being just like those of a body builder. At one point he tried to explain the use of hyphenation in order to conjoin words. To do so, he pushed his hands together centrally, seemingly around some six inch invisible force field; eyes popping, veins bulging, sinews straining, muscles trembling, his husky growl of voice char grilling his sentences - and sending us all into a state of supine submission. Afterwards, when I asked him how he found the class, he said he was mystified as to why the children were all so reticent and unwilling to contribute to his proposed dialogue. It then fell to me, to find the words to diplomatically explain that he had scared the shit out of all of them(and me), in such a way as to avoid his gleaming white gnashers coming into contact with my fibula.

That aside, the production skills course is commencing from 26th September this year, so I met up with Chinh yesterday to discuss my on-going role. Having completed the research phase and done the deal with Saigon's leading production facility to train the students in-house ( he said flexing his muscles), I've now got to write a course and syllabus, as well as organise workshops, whereby leading lights of the Communications industry will visit a the school and talk to our students about the opportunity the industry offers them. It really is fantastic to have been involved in setting something up that will lead the kids to a life that most of them could never have dreamt of. Once qualified, the best students will have no social or financial ceilings to inhibit their future progress.

Plenty to do then.

Dazed and Confucioused

The last few days have been quiet ish. This morning I was assessing some more TEFL Teachers and got to meet a couple of very nice Americans. One was a Vietnamese American and the other a lady from Chicago, both of whom it seemed would make good teachers due to their intelligent approach. In this respect I've noticed that you tend to four different types of people doing these courses; people who genuinely want to learn to teach, people who want to have something to make money while they travel, people who have an "X Factor" like desire to vent their own inadequacy by holding any audience, anywhere, captive, no matter the relevance and people who think that teaching should be an easy lark and subsequently discover that it isn't. Thankfully today's two were in the first bracket and I had an interesting chat with them both afterwards.The returning Vietnamese, in my opinion, serve a very important purpose in demonstrating the importance of free thinking and meritocracy to their Confucian Vietnamese relatives. Confucious was dreadful as he taught people to know their place in this world and to stay there unquestioningly - no matter what shit they were (and are) forced to eat - obviously such "religions" meet the needs of corrupt totalitarian states, perfectly. My weekend was fully occupied with teaching, but I managed to have more than a couple of drinks with Andrew along the way. He's been struck with the rainy season bug that seems to be sweeping the place, but my daily diet of a chicken pho with mounds of garlic and chilli, seems, for the time being, to be keeping the germs at bay. The work is busying up this week, which I'm happy about, as since my Wednesday morning class completed at the end of May, the middle of each week during day times has been quite quiet in terms of teaching. My Wednesday morning class is due to recommence when they find the requisite number of students, which will hopefully be in two weeks. I had a funny class last Friday morning in which I was teaching the difference between "must" and "mustn't" and "should" and "shouldn't". Having spent 10 minutes explaining and giving examples of their respective usages I told the students to write me some advice using each of the terms. Having done so I proceeded to go around each pupil asking for their particular advice when an isolated little voice parped up from nowhere and said " I think you should kiss me". I don't know who it was but it reduced us all to shreds, after which, naturally enough we couldn't continue.

I am a Dragon.....

I spent a little time yesterday preparing to help my "Canadians' by doing a bit of due diligence on their behalf and checking out the Vietnamese restaurant scene in Moncton, New Brunswick, - only to discover that a Vietnamese Restaurant already existed. Moncton, doesn't sound like a big place, so I immediately wondered whether the town would be big enough for the two of them. Anyway, I put those considerations to one side and thought "Oh well, at least this plan is a bit more realistic and will at least be easier to explain at first instance", which is as far as my involvement is going to go. I needn't have worried.
Little did I realise as Phuc and I trundled along Dien Bien Phu, that in the intervening 48 hours Dong and his wife had advanced another step ahead of me and had jettisoned the restaurant idea and were now going to open a warehousing business. So there you go. I spent an evening helping him to present his warehousing venture - who knows what next week will bring?
That aside, I've been spending my free moments reading a history of Vietnam which has been fascinating. I now know who most of the main streets in Saigon have been named after, which adds some depth to my experience of the city, as well as providing me with an understanding where the Vietnamese people have come from. It seems that the Vietnamese have spent the best part of the last 2000 years fighting off the Chinese, whether it be Ghengis Khan (Mongol) or the the Mandarins and making sure that the dykes are kept in a good state of repair for the efficent functioning of their economy. Apparently Ghengis's forces were finished off in Vietnam by the tropical rainy season and that fact that his Mongolese tribesmen couldn't take the tropical heat or diseases that seem to flourish at this time of year. In addition there was the astute guerilla warfare deployed by an eminent Vietnamese General named Tran Hung Dao, who acknowledged the fact that the Vietnamese could never repel an invader head on and should "show patience, like a silk worm nibbling a mulberry leaf" , a tactic that they seem to have deployed pretty successfully up to the present. Always playing the long game and never the short.
However, my favourite newly acquired gem relates to a story surrounding the Hung dynasty that existed around 4000 years ago. Legend has it ( and I quote) "Lord Lac Long Quan married Au Co, who bore him 100 sons. One day he said to his wife "I am a dragon, you are a fairy.... We can't remain together"" and so they didn't............Sounds reasonable enough to me. Anyway, suffice to say my admiration for the spontaneity and imagination of this man is boundless. He's a hero - Not even Rod Stewart's come up with anything that good.