RANTING/VENTING MEGATHREAD

"Speech" Contest Rant:

I'm pretty familiar with the stupid farce which are 'speech' contests over here. The only thing they succeed in doing is making students hate English even more. I was told about the contest a few weeks ago and my CT pretty much begged me to judge it. I go to a different school on the day of the contest so, I'd have to get that school to change their schedule, run out after my last class, rush to get a cab and rush to the contest school before it starts.

The Principal was also insisting the 3rd graders (Elementary school, who've only just started ABC) participate. In total we had 23 participants. The principal also wanted my CT and I (in other words me) to create a PPT storyboard of each of the scripts (which are based on stories). Some were familiar, such as Goldilocks, and some were too obscure to find illustrations for. Essentially I had to make PPT storyboards for 14 different stories. I mentioned to my CT that this was a lot of work, I don't think she understood what would go into finding, editing and matching quality illustrations for 14 different stories, since she's quite bad with computers and rarely creates PPTs.

After a good couple of hours of work, it was done and I sent it to my CT. The day of the speech contest was a total farce, as usual. What pissed me off was not that the principal couldn't be bothered and walked out after 5 minutes of the two hour ordeal. It was that:

A.) 3rd graders were made to sit in the hall, for 2 hours. After 15min, kids were shouting and it was
     near impossible to hear the participants, even with the help of a mic.

B.) Out of all the 8 judges, I was the only one listening to the students and putting down scores.
     The rest were just playing on their phones. I understand it's not to be taken too seriously, but
     at least put up some kind of pretence, I know that some of these kids struggled really hard to
     learn their stories and stand up and read it in front of everyone. What do you think that does to
     their confidence and motivation, when everyone else as talking and not paying attention during
     your speech.

C.) Selfishly, the worst was the fact that the careful timing of my storyboard was totally butchered
     and the slides were totally out of sync with the story. My CT had also cut out more than half of
     my slides! I went through a lot of trouble to find some clever, cute and funny (yet still
     appropriate) GIFs to spice up the boring stories so that everyone else could have something
     to be entertained by after hearing the same stories over and over again.

Every year, the bar for professionalism drops lower and lower.

^^^ and whoever the Korean judges thought was the cutest won, am I correct?

So glad that the only speeches I have to listen to now are from kids doing research papers. If I ever hear another stupid ****** screed about Dokdo or bibimbap, I'll kill myself.

Whenever I use the toilet at school, I always pre-flush; that is, I always flush it BEFORE I go as well as after because there is always, ALWAYS pee/poop in there from whoever used it before. Seriously, no one at my school flushes or uses toilet paper (they don't wash their hands either but that's pretty much a given). I know this because I routinely see even teachers going in there sans tissue and they just walk out without washing after.
...
The walls, doors, everything is covered in poo smears that haven't been cleaned once in the year I've been at this school.

I have exactly the same experience at my school. Not only that, but the male bathrooms are all completely without ventilation of any sort. No windows, no fans, nothing. As a result the stench from the urine-covered floors, feces-smeared walls, and festering 'waste' bins (to say nothing of the unflushed donations left by the students) creates a thick, eye-watering, stomach-churning miasma. The bathrooms have never been cleaned. Not even a token effort. At this point options are rapidly narrowing down to a tactical nuclear strike as the only viable method of cleansing that hellhole.

And in the (almost) three years that I have been at this school, I can count the number of occasions that people (including staff members) have even glanced at water and soap on one hand. After losing digits. Multiple digits.

But, of course, I'm the dirty one.

Lot of negativity here from the community. I'm not going to poop anyone by saying I'm not one of you all. I'd like to think I'm a grand master, or something along those lines.

I do think, like the Berenstein Bears taught me, it is important to count your blessings.

If you were Korean, you'd care about ocean rocks, fermented vegetables, and other trivial things.

We are lucky to have what we have and know what we know.

I do think, like the Berenstein Bears taught me, it is important to count your blessings.

BerenstAin Bears.

http://www.vice.com/read/the-berensteain-bears-conspiracy-theory-that-has-convinced-the-internet-there-are-parallel-universes

Lot of negativity here from the community. I'm not going to poop anyone by saying I'm not one of you all. I'd like to think I'm a grand master, or something along those lines.

I do think, like the Berenstein Bears taught me, it is important to count your blessings.

If you were Korean, you'd care about ocean rocks, fermented vegetables, and other trivial things.

We are lucky to have what we have and know what we know.

RANTING/VENTING MEGATHREAD

Read that topic and love it. Cuz for real, yo, no offense, but posts like this are annoying.

Lot of negativity here from the community. I'm not going to poop anyone by saying I'm not one of you all. I'd like to think I'm a grand master, or something along those lines.

I do think, like the Berenstein Bears taught me, it is important to count your blessings.

If you were Korean, you'd care about ocean rocks, fermented vegetables, and other trivial things.

We are lucky to have what we have and know what we know.

RANTING/VENTING MEGATHREAD

Read that topic and love it. Cuz for real, yo, no offense, but posts like this are annoying.

Read between the lines, bruh. No offence^^

Lot of negativity here from the community. I'm not going to poop anyone by saying I'm not one of you all. I'd like to think I'm a grand master, or something along those lines.

I do think, like the Berenstein Bears taught me, it is important to count your blessings.

If you were Korean, you'd care about ocean rocks, fermented vegetables, and other trivial things.

We are lucky to have what we have and know what we know.

RANTING/VENTING MEGATHREAD

Read that topic and love it. Cuz for real, yo, no offense, but posts like this are annoying.

Read between the lines, bruh. No offence^^

Ah, sorry. I guess your humor was a little subtle for me.

My rant for today:

WHY ISN'T THE KIMCHI AT GIMBAPNARA AS GOOD AS THE KIMCHI AT GIMBAP CHUNGOOK?  WHAT'S THIS D@MN WORLD COMING TO?

Since I've been in Korea I've become pretty obsessive about germs, especially in bathrooms. The bathrooms at my school are absolutely filthy.

Whenever I use the toilet at school, I always pre-flush; that is, I always flush it BEFORE I go as well as after because there is always, ALWAYS pee/poop in there from whoever used it before. Seriously, no one at my school flushes or uses toilet paper (they don't wash their hands either but that's pretty much a given). I know this because I routinely see even teachers going in there sans tissue and they just walk out without washing after. Well, one day last week I pre-flushed and the nasty water immediately overflowed and splashed onto the floor and a little on my legs. I didn't notice that it was going to overflow right away because I always close the seat first to prevent splash-back. So I had to awkwardly maneuver my way out of that tiny, cramped stall to avoid stepping in more pee water as best I could, while also avoiding touching the walls and pretty much anything else in the stall. The walls, doors, everything is covered in poo smears that haven't been cleaned once in the year I've been at this school.

Anyway, after that toilet flooded, all the water seeped into the middle of the bathroom toward the drain, so of course I went downstairs to use the other bathroom. The exact same thing happened. Apparently the plumbing in the entire building is messed up. So now I have to make the trek to a completely different building that still has flushing toilets every time I have to go and it's annoying AF as I'm walking throughout the buildings carrying a giant handful of TP which I need extra of to cover the toilet seats first and/or wipe them down because they're covered in pee drops. The rage I feel...

I didn't think women had to worry about stained seats/rims.

Seriously...how does one stain the seat if you're sitting down??? That has to be some awkward trajectory angle 

I'm guessing the girls are standing on the seats and squatting, because it's not just a droplet or two... The entire seat will often be covered in pee spray. 

If they're squatting over the toilets that means they're most probably wearing shoes on the f**king rim/seat!!!

As a general rule, I don't go to public (and school) bathrooms without wet wipes and alcohol gel/spray...I generally give the aforementioned toilet parts a good wipe down before doing a healthy no. 2

I recommend you do the same.

I'm guessing the girls are standing on the seats and squatting, because it's not just a droplet or two... The entire seat will often be covered in pee spray. 

This is one of those rare moments where I actually appreciate squat toilets, as nasty as they smell.

My rant of the day:
M*THERF*CKING VIRUS CHASER.  I downloaded Revo Uninstaller and got rid of this initially, but either the tech guy re-installs it regularly (not sure when) or it auto-installs somehow after a reboot.  It is the bane of my existence and is now password-protected too.  I wish I had the tech savvy I did back in high school to go in manually in safe mode and rip it out by hand.  F*cking Virus Chaser.

On the bright side, I did seem to successfully get rid of GenianPC.

At my middle school is make-up and booger smeared all over the stalls of the bathroom walls. Its disgusting. The students clean the school but they NEVER clean the toilet! 

My rant of the day:
M*THERF*CKING VIRUS CHASER.  I downloaded Revo Uninstaller and got rid of this initially, but either the tech guy re-installs it regularly (not sure when) or it auto-installs somehow after a reboot.  It is the bane of my existence and is now password-protected too.  I wish I had the tech savvy I did back in high school to go in manually in safe mode and rip it out by hand.  F*cking Virus Chaser.

Makes me even more grateful that my new school just has teachers take laptops from classroom to classroom and hook up to projectors or big screens via HDMI or VGA, rather than having computers in every room. I bring my own kickass gaming laptop, and they didn't require me to install any security nonsense on it. Best of all, everything on it is in English!

Oops, this is a rant thread...

Um...

Grrrr, sometimes the GS25 is out of the triangle kimbap I like when I go there after work! Anger!

My rant of the day:
M*THERF*CKING VIRUS CHASER.  I downloaded Revo Uninstaller and got rid of this initially, but either the tech guy re-installs it regularly (not sure when) or it auto-installs somehow after a reboot.  It is the bane of my existence and is now password-protected too.  I wish I had the tech savvy I did back in high school to go in manually in safe mode and rip it out by hand.  F*cking Virus Chaser.

Makes me even more grateful that my new school just has teachers take laptops from classroom to classroom and hook up to projectors or big screens via HDMI or VGA, rather than having computers in every room. I bring my own kickass gaming laptop, and they didn't require me to install any security nonsense on it. Best of all, everything on it is in English!

Oops, this is a rant thread...

Um...

Grrrr, sometimes the GS25 is out of the triangle kimbap I like when I go there after work! Anger!

Fortunately they installed the English version of Windows on my computer, though MS Office is all in Korean.  Not really an issue as I can still navigate it and make most of my heavier PowerPoints at home. The fact that someone is trying to police my computer usage because everyone else is a moron when it comes to technology just pisses me off though.

Yeah, over the past three and a half years I became rather proficient at navigating powerpoint in Korean, but it's still awesome being able to use it in English all the time now. Not only that, but it'll always be the same computer and the same version of powerpoint, so I don't have to worry about an animation working on one class' computer but not on another one that has an older version of Office installed.

Plus now I'll be able to play Skyrim when I'm deskwarming...

But if it was BerenstAin, and it always was BerenstAin, then surely we wouldn't remember it with an E. I mean if we're in a parallel universe, where it's spelled BerenstAin, wouldn't we remember it with an A?

If someone had a photo from their childhood, of themselves reading one of those books, then the book in the photo would read BerenstEin, would it not? And if it didn't, if it read BerenstAin, then we wouldn't be having this crisis, because we would have always remembered it with an A.

Maybe I don't understand parallel universes correctly. 

Coincidentally, I was reading one these books just yesterday as the school I was at has a whole collection of them. Having read them as a kid, I was super excited. I looked at the "Berenstain" and for a half second was like, "What? It's Berenstein, isn't it?!?" It kind of niggled at me inside my brain, but I let it go. Now I hear there is another parallel universe to consider.  I can barely keep track of my own timeline...

Traveled this last weekend.

Mentioned how there were a ton of Chinese tourist.

CT goes on rant bad mouthing Chinese, how they are loud and dirty or something...


After hearing that, I decided to chime in on the part of the trip where:

Korean gets on the bus, instantly starts talking on his phone loud as hell, and SPITS ON THE BUS FLOOR!

Then on the way home, on the train, the train gets delayed because a man was so WASTED HE PASSED OUT ON THE FLOOR, and they had to come drag him out...

she gives me a face as if I am making it all up or something....


yeah...

So I started a thread on Friday to allow us a decent fighting pit that the more pugnacious among us can go to instead of derailing other threads. Fun was had, questions were asked, arguments were put forth, tentative steps towards friendship were taken over some terrible Australian pop music. All in a good thread for dogs that like a scrap and one obvious to avoid for the sensible folk.

I returned to work full of trepidation. I had read a few articles on xojane and everdayfeminism and was ready to do battle with consenting enemies. Alternatively I could elaborate on my tales of Berber lovers. My hopes were to be brutally dashed on the rocks of censorship.

Over the weekend a moderator swooped down like a shrike and callously locked the thread down. Only one vague warning was given. What personal attacks? Many statements were attacked but that's it. The worse is the claim that the subject above had been discussed. What subject? The thread touched on feminism, racism, fictional childhoods, perceptions in Korea and many more. Also, why is it the worse crime on earth to discuss something twice?

Seriously mods, why on earth do you lock down threads for flimsy reasons. What makes you think that is your role in life? Why does unfettered discussion among adults bother you so much? Is this forum some sort of online version of the Stanford Prison Experiments? Is Arsalan trying to prove that power is inevitably abused?

Maybe the primary stakeholders in this website should have a chat as to what this site is for. If you want to make it a place simply for expat advice and teaching resources then say so and make it so. Close down the Open Discussion and the Newsroom. If you allow people a venue to express themselves then don't get huffy when they use it.

Maybe this is a sign of my age. I guess I can't shake the idea that debate and free expression are good things and censorship is bad. Do you under 30's prefer comfort to challenge? Does free speech mean little to you?

Anyways, just needed to rant.

another thread locked, huh? i wonder how the mods would cope if they ability to lock threads was removed. maybe they'd actually have to start doing some actual moderating.

this is why i previously proposed a system where people vote for mods. unfortunately Arsalan seems to make some strange choices when it comes to who to make a moderator.