Because I have made you wait long enough, now is that time.
Relax a while, reader, as I weave a tale of intrigue shadier than a ... shady....shade.
You remember, of course, the boss I mentioned at the beginning of the year? The wounded military veteran professional gambler with a few aggravating traits?
I read the book American Shaolin a week ago, and it mentioned that in Asian societies (specifically Chinese, but applicable elsewhere), feelings are not expressed at surface level, so that a man can get a leg up on everyone else around him. And no one asks whether a person is lying, they ask why he is lying.
Well, fresh off the plane midwestern me was not worldly enough to know these details intimately. So when my boss would tell me about himself (and I could put down my bible and apple pie long enough to listen), it never occurred to me that he was telling anything but the truth. But after he left, about a month ago, the truth began to come out.
His Masters in English?
From a nonexistent university in England.
Wait a minute, I cried, he actually did live in England!
As it turns out, he did. He fled the country with his uncle who was under suspicion of drug charges, while still in high school. Meaning not only did he never get that masters degree, he may've never had a diploma either.
But he MUST have had some value as a teacher! As soon as he left, students started to quit the school.
Word began to come in from parents a few weeks later, that before he left, this man had told the parents that the other teachers at my school lacked college degrees. Sinister. But not as sinister as insinuating that the NEW school he was starting would be run by he himself who they could trust. Can you almost feel the snake oil?
Finally, A new teacher that had been called in right as he was leaving had been quiet around me. Not unusual. We didn't primarily communicate in the same language, so that's normal, right?
Turns out, he'd told her I didn't talk to her because I looked down on her English skills.
Turned the staff against each other? Check.
Turned the students against the staff? Affirmative.
Bamboozled everyone with forged documents? You got it
Funneled the runoff into his own school? Perfectly
Step five? Profit.
Also that "pro gambler " thing was actually just him having a betting problem.
Am I upset about all this? You bet I am!
I was working under a Master of the Art all along and had no idea because I didn't speak the language! Oh the disappointment! There was so much I should've been learning! I mean, he's not a TRUE master because he was found out, but that's still a stunning amount of bluffing your way past everyone. The saying in the school now is that the only truth ever heard from his mouth was the sound of breathing, and we're still checking the certificates on that.
So that's good news. My story needed a villain. A plot twist of sorts, so that everyone can go back the the scene selection on the 14HoursAndAWorld DVD and go "oooooh yeah, I totally saw this coming".
While we're on the subject of deception, there one other cruel trick I'd like to point out, and it's more general, and not leveled at a single person. Because it's leveled at a group, it may sound like I'm generalizing.
I am.
I do.
I will continue to do so.
I'm sure you can find exceptions to my generalizations, but they are based on observations. Never fabrications. Wow, Jeff-poet, congratulations.
Anyway, I saw this comic recently
The accuracy is astounding. Even down to the granny-perm and tracksuit. And it made me pause to think. I have been told that Waygooks (us foreign people) look old more quickly than Koreans. Which brought up the idea of aging gracefully- it seems to be rarer here. Aging seems less like a gradual adding of laugh lines and crows feet and senility, and more like one day the Wisdom delivery truck arrives but it crashes directly on them while making its delivery. That may be in part due to the harder life lived here and later retirement age, but either way, one thing jumped out at me.
I do see many foreign men here take local girlfriends. However, when I see a man in his fifties walking with his Korean wife, rarely do I stop and think "He chose....wisely".
So I believe I've found the cruelest deciever of them all, and that's beauty.
Don't despair, men in the audience! Yes, you can still choose a beautiful girl and be happy with her. But the moral of the story is- you should check out her mother first. Maybe get some indication of whether she's going to keep that lovely figure when she-- ok you're checking her mother out for too long. Yes, everyone can see what you're doing. But in all seriousness-- Safeguard yourselves with this one simple check. Just long enough to make sure there's no granny perm should be fine.
Til next time
Jeff-Teacher
Jeff-Teacher
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