WEDNESDAY, 2 FEBRUARY 2011
The average foreign English teacher in Taiwan’s income system has four disadvantages:
1. The work is boring and repetitive.
2. They work for people who sometimes make bad decisions that make their work more difficult, and they can’t do much about it.
3. Their income system is linked to specific places, which means they need to spend anything between thirty minutes and two hours on the road every day, probably on a scooter, and sometimes in hot, humid weather and/or heavy monsoon rains.
4. Their income system is not sustainable – in many cases they cannot still do this work in ten or fifteen years’ time, and there isn’t much opportunity for career growth.
That being said, I sometimes envy foreign teachers with a reasonably full schedule their income system, because of one advantage: they have to follow a set of rules every day of the week, Monday through Friday, and the end result is about NT$3,000 [approximately US$100] per day. Three thousand new Taiwan dollars. Per day. Five days a week.
THURSDAY, 3 FEBRUARY 2011
I hope to become less enthusiastic about taking a position on something without considering all the angles, and less eager to inform others without delay why I think someone is wrong, and why I am right.
I hope to become a better listener, because even when someone is wrong about one thing, they can still make valid points about something else. And even if someone is wrong in your opinion, their arguments are still coming from somewhere, and it is always better to understand where a person is coming from than to not understand it.
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