Working Stiff

Man, having a job is hard work. To illustrate this obvious-to-everyone-but-me fact, I'm gonna illustrate a single day. It covers about half of the crap I do, but it'll suffice because I'm lazy.

Friday - six o'clock in the AM. That's right, apparently there's a six in the morning too, it's not just for evenings anymore. I find this development both terrifying and aunecessary, and urge society to return to the old model. Y'know, the one where days begin at eight (Eleven at the weekend). Regardless here in the misbegotten east everyone seems to have accepted this and gladly begin their day at the same time as the sun. This is why they lost the war... Oh.

Anyway, once my phone's alarm has been steadfastly ignored my iPod kicks into life and thus begins my ascent from the pit. NB, the pit is metaphorical; my bed is in no way subterranean. I crouch my way through a cold shower, since whoever installed my bathroom was some kind of inept midget, and proceed to spend too long on my hair. It's of the length where I can't do anything with it, and I'll be damned if I'm getting it cut here. Everyone has awful hair, it's like Springfield. Then I put on my underthings and face my tie rack. Is it really a tie rack if it only has two ties? Is it really a tie rack if it's just a wire coathanger? Does function define an item? It does if I say it does. So shirt on, tie on, trousers on, shoes on. Check the hair on roll out the door into this bizarre pre-Trisha world.

My Guesthouse is down a wee ginnel (or small alley\tight back passage if you're bland\creepy) and on my way to the main street I pass a dinkly little shop\family home. For serious, their fron room has three walls and a shutter. The shutter rolls up to reveal the family home and some fridges o' drinks. It's cool\surreal, I'll get photos. So because I like these guys, I buy a drink. Usually a tasty Orange thingy or a tasty Lemon thingy for they are tasty. Glug glug and I need to get to work. All I have to do is look vaguely lost for about five seconds and one of the dirtly looking older gentlemen in the alley will make vroom vroom gestures at me, asking if I want to ride their motorbike. This isn't a metaphor. For about a dollar they'll put me on the back of their bike and taxi me to work on the street I can't pronounce, and after poitning to it on a map and a small card in my pocket we ride!In theory I should agree prices before getting on, but these guys are here everyday and by now I know they're good peeps who won't rip me off.

Bumpety bump bump through the busy streets of Saigon, and at around Seven-Fifteen (why is it busy at this time of day? what is wrong with these people?) I pull up outside one of the city's numerous private schools. I visit two of their sites a week, and this one is my favourite of the two. Next to the entrance is a pho place (meaty noodles, I'll explain eventually) and over the road is an old lady selling drinks and gum. Handy for my break. Also cigarettes, which are handy for nothing except swift death and empty wallets. (See how I editorialise? Bwa ha ha!).

Half past seven means I'm stood in front a of a blackboard (oh chalk on my black trousers, how I hate thee) and being deafened by a chorus of seven year olds shouting "Good Morning Teacher!" as loud as they can. They don't know much English, but what they do know they shout. Books get opened, words get chanted back at me and we all pretend we're learning. Seriously though, my main job in these classes is speaking and listening practise. Their Vietnamese teachers drill them with lots of grammar and vocab, but their pronunciation is awful and the final consonant sound is missing from pretty much evrey word. This is because in Vietnamese it's usually silent, and it takes a while to get used to saying it (or filling in the blank yourself if you're Liam chatting with a local and looking like a particularly moronic tourist in the process). We play a C, we repeat everything on the CD then I draw stick men on the board to demonstrate new vocab. I draw an aweome 'My Grandfather' now, and have chalky crow's feet down to a freakin' artform. For serious. Lessons last thirty-five minutes, and I have a TA for around fifteen. They sit at the back and mark work while I engage in buffoonery. It's a lot like being back at the pub. That's the basics. The nitty gritties is that the younger the students the more problem students there are. There's always one kid that acts up and distracts the others (I remember that guy in my classes. He was devilishly handsome and had scruffy hair...) and since they know I can't actually discipline them (and that my TA certainly won't) they just mess around for the whole lesson. Usually it's possible to work around this, but sometimes I'll just give up on the meticulously planned lesson and play games on the board. Anything that scores points or allows the kids to write on the board gets them all hyper, and that's when I get to run around with them and shout. If I shout at any other time they just burst into laughter because losing one's temper here is very rare and very poor form. I'm yet to make anyone cry, but there's time to get my fury focused. Two lessons and I get to break for sugary soft drinks.Two more lessons and I get to break for lunch. Then it's another two and two (Fridays are my longest day by far thanks to this double shift) and I can eat. Only there's nowhere good to eat near here and I'm too tired to wander, so I take a bike back to Apollo (the school I work for, very nice building) and order in. Pretty much anything can be ordered in, but Friday is usually mexican stuff so I'll get something deep fried with cheese. Mmmm.

Oh Apollo. It's a sizable with three main floors and a mezzanine (try teaching that!) and pretty darn modern. Opened in 2000 and something by a vague member of the royal family. The company was the the first foreign language school in Vietnam and has one hell of a rep. It's incredibly well run and super professional. The teacher's room has four Vietnamese support staff, and then next door we have another dozen along with two IT guys (One's irish, the other's socially stunted and maybe some kind of shaman? They have hilarious adventures and a goth in the server room. Oh wait, no.) along with an actual kitchen with two women whose role here is a mystery to me. I think they arrange biscuits on plates and change the water coolers but beyond that it gets murky. There's a big resource library and we get poorly made backpacks provided for us (try putting more than two textbooks in and watch how fast they fall apart) so they clearly love their teachers. I can't stress enough how much like a huge corporation this place is, and it freaked me out at first. Now I'm down with it, because many of the teachers are cool, and the rest are never around. Plus there's nice fast interwebs for Facebooking...

Ok, after eating and Facebooking I have to teach. By now we're talking seven forty-five and I'm flagging. I wasn't built for this kinda day, even with prodigious amounts of snacking and breaks! My evening class is made up of a mix of adults and older teenagers, so we all get to have fun and speak some nice English. They also get sarcasm which is a major boon for me since I'm not sure I know how to be serious. They's good people. I flip open a textbook, I stand in front of them and chat and then we all do some talking. Lessons are mostly reading from a textbook, followed by discussing the piece. They sit around tables in four chunks of four, so they're easy to pair off or divide into groups and I like to do that a lot. Adults grammar is usually up to scrath so it's fun with new tenses (I draw a badass timeline these days), vocab (I also explain words well, with a delicate balance of stick men, a box of toys and inane had gestures) and lots of speaking practice. Finish those words people! These lessons last two hours, and when they're done we all file out and I scoot down to the teacher's room sharpish. There we all gather round eyeing one another uneasily. We slowly put our books away, and I change into comfortable shoes and hover. The silence and tension grow, no-one knows where to look. It's unbearable. Then the axe falls. It was always inevitable and it seals our fate.
"So who's coming for a drink?"

Saturday mornings are bastards...

One Week In...

It's been a whole entire week (and a day) since I arrived, and I'm still no closer to having my stuff. This is beginning to grate.

That said, I might almost be getting a hang f the city. I'm now entirely capable of ordering food (and not just menu pointing. I also mime a mean chicken.) and getting my taxi to take me home. OK, that last part is a half-truth. I got on the back of the bike, and told the bucktoothed driver the street name. He asked me something in Vietnamese, I repeated the street name and name of my guest house and he scooted off. In what was clearly the wrong direction. Rush hour traffic and terrible driving combined to glue my hands to my seat, and my English moans were dismissed as we scooted over a river of some kind into a decidedly seedy part of Saigon. Decidedly Seedy. So I managed to stop him (after we were well over the river since the riverbanks are crime-tastic) and then managed to spend a whole ten minutes looking for another cab to get home in. You know you've left the civilized part of this place when you can't find a barefooted old man to ferry you about. Those bastards are everywhere...

Right, so that little adventure aside I've managed to get my feet well and truly under the table. I even know which of my 100 channels are in English (I found Cartoon Network in the late 50s, just after ESPN). I learned that my toilet paper will destroy the very fabric of the universe or something, and so it should be put in the bin rather than down the toilet. This means that toilet cubicles smell worse than you'd want them to. In this heat a poop session of five or more minutes is presumably deadly. Good job I'm getting pretty blocked up! Yeah, who'd have guessed that left to my own devices all the balance would leave my diet and be replaced by noodles and cookies. Wow. This was a matuuuure paragraph.

Oh, I totally started at school this week, and it makes me feel even more hoboish than usual. Quite the challenge. I get to wear a tie and nice shoes and do up my top button. I hate these things. I don't think I've had my top button buttoned since I was 10. Yikes. Oh, and you should see my two new shirts for work. I have a lovely blue one and a snappy pink number. Oh yeah, Liam's wearing a pink shirt. Fashionable trends of 2002 here I am. Once I get some money I'll be taking advantage of the fashion pirates and getting some knock off trainers. I reckon that getting a pair of sweatshop shoes for two dollars is more moral than paying around eighty, right? Right? Oh well I don't care. Also on the list are a watch that'll look like it cost less than a quid and actually cost even less and a pair of sunglasses. I'll have to take off my beloved communist\emo looking cap, but apparently I should do that anyway.

Ooh, and my neighbours have a pet chicken!

Same Jeans...

Same Pants too.

OK, strolling off the plane into HCM Airport the muggy humidity hits you square in the jaw. It's no worse than any other far eastern country but it's not exactly pleasant. Nor, for that matter, is getting all visa'd up. After already having applied for it weeks ago I got to fill out the forms again and I think I like filling out forms as much as I do sitting still for twelve hours. Gragh. That said, I think I suit the 'vague surprise' expression that I wear on my official papers, so that's fine. Some Vietnamese beaurocrats are in for a real treat if I get up to anything that requires my immediate deportation. I ended up being one of the first to the baggae carousel though, which made the waiting all the more fun. Once all the bags had rolled on and been claimed (even that one fugly bag that everyone ignores a few times before its owner sheepishly carts it off when he thinks you're not looking). Now, my Vietnamese ain't great (I'm pretty sure the language isn't even CALLED that) so trying to get my bag back in French was hi-freakin-larious. Luckily there was a chart and some pictures so it got done in the end. Also the form was in English as well, so I the official's attempt to foil me was futile. I think. Bagless and weary (like Mary and Joseph in a way...) I slouched out of the arrivals terminal to be met with a young lady (no idea what her name was, I was barely awake and it wasn't Hannah so...) and a taxi to my guest house.

My taxi ride. Wow. The cab was clean etc but the awesomeness was the fact that every other vehicle on the road was a scooter. OK, maybe not every but most. Feh. Oh, how they duck and weave. Oh how they ignore all known traffic laws. Oh how they smell. They duck in and out of each other, cut each other off and en masse they look like their drivers are psychic because I'll be damned if I know how they avoid crashing into each other and flipping out. The horns are a lot quieter than Azeri ones too, which is something of a boon. If you ever been to Baku (oh how I laugh) you'll know of the cacophony that greets you every time you come close to a road. What? Yes, it is all close to roads. Yes, the noise is a constant background hum. No, I didn't get used to it. I don't mind the scooters though. Not at all.

Um, the Guesthouse 'California' makes a token effort to seem American in ther lobby. Well, whatever comes below token. There's a bottle of Southern comfort and some Disey crap sat behind the counter. Oh, and Batman Forever commemorative glasses from McDonald's. I may be stealing these on the way home. Val Kilmer is an underappreciated Batman (Again, how I laugh). My room is clean and has two fans, the shower comes up to my nipples (bless these tiny folks. Did I mention that I saw a Vietnamese midget on the plane? He was the smallest adult I ever saw. Awesome. If only he was female, I'd have me a wife to bring home) and the bed is made of steel. Ok, maybe not steel. Maybe just harder than the soupy mattress I'm used to. I do get HBO Asia though, meaning I watched Casino Royale for the first time, subtitled and still two thirds of a good movie. WTF is it with that ending? Hey did I say ending?