RANTING/VENTING MEGATHREAD 3.0

Please understand them, they are only children

I will hunt you down and give you a stern finger-wagging.

Part of your very particular set of skills, skills you have acquired over a very long career of teaching ESL here in Korea, I take it? 

Out of all the kids I've taught, there's this one kid. I daresay, he's probably the worst little douchebag I've ever taught.

- 3yrs of concerted efforts and motivation from myself, my CT and the HR teacher and he's yet to bother even learning the ABCs.
- I've been told he makes no effort in any of the other classes and just sits back with a smug smile on his face.
- He constantly disturbs the other students, during class, and literally cries to his mom to phone the school and complain
  whenever he gets reprimanded.
- Has zero mental issues, according to the HR teacher. Funnily enough, there is a kid with a mental disorder in the same class
  and that kid blows this little sh*t out the water in English and, apparently, every other subject.
- He enjoys breaking things, never knocks when entering and sometimes kicks the door open, litters and just drops whatever
  he finishes using on the floor.
- He usually blames his friends whenever he gets caught and will be the first to interrupt the class and snitch on another student
  for sleeping, doodling or not paying attention.
- He's overweight, hates sports and just wants to play mobile games and eat ramen.
- Today, he was part of the cleaning crew for my classroom. 3 other kids got on with the job of sweeping, wiping down the desks
  and cleaning the board. The only time his broom touched the floor was when he laughed and knocked the dirt out of the
  dustpan of the other student. I punished him by telling him to clean the rest of the class alone. He whined, slouched,
  complained, then ran away crying. The HR teacher said he claimed I was "picking on him". Thankfully, the HR teacher is well
  aware of this little sh*t and we both forced him to clean the class... he sulked and moan throughout the ordeal and still put
  maximum effort in doing the most half-arsed job imaginable.

Little asshole reminds me of the Korean version of Dudley (Harry Potter). Luckily, I only teach his class once a week and there are enough awesome little kids in the same class that he's in the minority and doesn't have the guts to really disrupt things when he's alone.

I've had a few students who literally sound like clones of this kid over the years (although in my case none of them have been overweight). But yeah - they're the worst.

Please understand them, they are only children

I will hunt you down and give you a stern finger-wagging.

Part of your very particular set of skills, skills you have acquired over a very long career of teaching ESL here in Korea, I take it? 

Disciplined, a Korean Action-Thriller

Out of all the kids I've taught, there's this one kid. I daresay, he's probably the worst little douchebag I've ever taught.

- 3yrs of concerted efforts and motivation from myself, my CT and the HR teacher and he's yet to bother even learning the ABCs.
- I've been told he makes no effort in any of the other classes and just sits back with a smug smile on his face.
- He constantly disturbs the other students, during class, and literally cries to his mom to phone the school and complain
  whenever he gets reprimanded.
- Has zero mental issues, according to the HR teacher. Funnily enough, there is a kid with a mental disorder in the same class
  and that kid blows this little sh*t out the water in English and, apparently, every other subject.
- He enjoys breaking things, never knocks when entering and sometimes kicks the door open, litters and just drops whatever
  he finishes using on the floor.
- He usually blames his friends whenever he gets caught and will be the first to interrupt the class and snitch on another student
  for sleeping, doodling or not paying attention.
- He's overweight, hates sports and just wants to play mobile games and eat ramen.
- Today, he was part of the cleaning crew for my classroom. 3 other kids got on with the job of sweeping, wiping down the desks
  and cleaning the board. The only time his broom touched the floor was when he laughed and knocked the dirt out of the
  dustpan of the other student. I punished him by telling him to clean the rest of the class alone. He whined, slouched,
  complained, then ran away crying. The HR teacher said he claimed I was "picking on him". Thankfully, the HR teacher is well
  aware of this little sh*t and we both forced him to clean the class... he sulked and moan throughout the ordeal and still put
  maximum effort in doing the most half-arsed job imaginable.

Little asshole reminds me of the Korean version of Dudley (Harry Potter). Luckily, I only teach his class once a week and there are enough awesome little kids in the same class that he's in the minority and doesn't have the guts to really disrupt things when he's alone.

In other words, he has garbage parents.

In other words, he has garbage parents.

Yeah, the parents can only be blamed for so much, depending on the child, but THIS ONE!

Good lord, get the kid's shit together.

i find it insane that korean taxi drivers have such a strong union, and keep protesting other companies being allowed to operate in korea. i know this is anecdotal, but it also sums up my experience of taxi drivers too. this happened today when my wife was in a taxi

korean taxi driver:
- refused to use the gps
- took a long route (10-15 mins longer than it should have taken)
- kept asking her inappropriate questions (she kept texting me telling me she was a bit scared of him)
- refused to turn the music down (she was with our cat, which was getting stressed out by the loud music)
- got angry when my wife kept trying to get him to drop her off, err, where she actually wanted to go)

on the way back she got a tada taxi:
- driver was very professional and friendly
- took the quickest route (took normal time, i.e. 15 mins less than wit the other taxi)
- asked if she was comfortable / was okay with the music volume (and station)
- turned off the gps notifications (the "turn left, go straight" voice)
- apologised when he went over a speed bump quickly
- cheaper than the korean taxi

my wife was amazed and said she will try her best to use tada whenever possible from now on

i mean, no shit that people want to use taxi alternatives. taxi drivers can honestly **** off

i find it insane that korean taxi drivers have such a strong union, and keep protesting other companies being allowed to operate in korea. i know this is anecdotal, but it also sums up my experience of taxi drivers too. this happened today when my wife was in a taxi

korean taxi driver:
- refused to use the gps
- took a long route (10-15 mins longer than it should have taken)
- kept asking her inappropriate questions (she kept texting me telling me she was a bit scared of him)
- refused to turn the music down (she was with our cat, which was getting stressed out by the loud music)
- got angry when my wife kept trying to get him to drop her off, err, where she actually wanted to go)

on the way back she got a tada taxi:
- driver was very professional and friendly
- took the quickest route (took normal time, i.e. 15 mins less than wit the other taxi)
- asked if she was comfortable / was okay with the music volume (and station)
- turned off the gps notifications (the "turn left, go straight" voice)
- apologised when he went over a speed bump quickly
- cheaper than the korean taxi

my wife was amazed and said she will try her best to use tada whenever possible from now on

i mean, no shit that people want to use taxi alternatives. taxi drivers can honestly **** off

Oh yeah, my favourite bunch.

Either last year, or early this year, one idiot taxi driver protested the new ride-sharing service by setting himself alight; the very pinnacle of a crybaby temper tantrum. I watched an Asian Boss documentary where they interviewed some passengers and taxi drivers, who were protesting (in Seoul).

The passengers claimed:

- They'd sometimes have to wait for over an hour for a taxi as drivers didn't want to pick them up at night.
- Drivers complained or refused to pick them up if their destination was to close.
- Drivers drove recklessly
- Some female passengers claimed there was sexual harassment
 
Taxi drivers complained:

- They'd lose their jobs (as a result of not doing their jobs properly in the first place and creating a demand in the market)
- The other ride services didn't undergo the rigorous safety training the taxi drivers did (LOL, taxi drivers break every driving law there is)
- The other ride services were just young people trying to make extra booze money (..........)

Nobodies stopping taxi drivers from becoming tada drivers, they're acting exactly like 5-year olds looking for a mother to bitch to.
 You couldn't have put it more succinctly "taxi drivers can **** off."

Re Taxi drivers:

Don’t ask other companies to lower the value they offer customers; up yours!

Yeah... Getting these guys to accept that THEY'RE the problem is the hard part.

I'll be honest, about 90% of the taxi drivers I encounter have been decent to good. But I only take taxis about three or four times a month, so I don't have the biggest sample to go off. But the 10% bad ones that I've encountered - wow. The worst. People have already listed all the crappy things they do.

I get that they have a (ridiculously) strong lobby, somehow, and they want to fight things that may compete with their job, but like... that's not how the world works? Nobody's helping the people whose manufacturing jobs (clothing, electronics, metal stuff, etc) is getting outsourced to cheaper countries. Nobody's helping people whose jobs are being replaced by automated kiosks in restaurants. Job landscapes change. The fact that the taxi lobby expects such preferential treatment as to literally outlaw any competition blows my mind.

i find it insane that korean taxi drivers have such a strong union, and keep protesting other companies being allowed to operate in korea. i know this is anecdotal, but it also sums up my experience of taxi drivers too. this happened today when my wife was in a taxi

korean taxi driver:
- refused to use the gps
- took a long route (10-15 mins longer than it should have taken)
- kept asking her inappropriate questions (she kept texting me telling me she was a bit scared of him)
- refused to turn the music down (she was with our cat, which was getting stressed out by the loud music)
- got angry when my wife kept trying to get him to drop her off, err, where she actually wanted to go)

on the way back she got a tada taxi:
- driver was very professional and friendly
- took the quickest route (took normal time, i.e. 15 mins less than wit the other taxi)
- asked if she was comfortable / was okay with the music volume (and station)
- turned off the gps notifications (the "turn left, go straight" voice)
- apologised when he went over a speed bump quickly
- cheaper than the korean taxi

my wife was amazed and said she will try her best to use tada whenever possible from now on

i mean, no shit that people want to use taxi alternatives. taxi drivers can honestly **** off

Oh yeah, my favourite bunch.

Either last year, or early this year, one idiot taxi driver protested the new ride-sharing service by setting himself alight; the very pinnacle of a crybaby temper tantrum. I watched an Asian Boss documentary where they interviewed some passengers and taxi drivers, who were protesting (in Seoul).

The passengers claimed:

- They'd sometimes have to wait for over an hour for a taxi as drivers didn't want to pick them up at night.
- Drivers complained or refused to pick them up if their destination was to close.
- Drivers drove recklessly
- Some female passengers claimed there was sexual harassment
 
Taxi drivers complained:

- They'd lose their jobs (as a result of not doing their jobs properly in the first place and creating a demand in the market)
- The other ride services didn't undergo the rigorous safety training the taxi drivers did (LOL, taxi drivers break every driving law there is)
- The other ride services were just young people trying to make extra booze money (..........)

Nobodies stopping taxi drivers from becoming tada drivers, they're acting exactly like 5-year olds looking for a mother to bitch to.
 You couldn't have put it more succinctly "taxi drivers can **** off."

If most taxi drivers were normal, sane people they'd realize the only reason their job is in jeopardy is because of the way they do their job. If they did their jobs well and weren't constantly trying to pick fights with people, cause traffic accidents or just be nasty people in general there wouldn't be a problem with them. My husband has had so many near accidents because of taxi drivers trying to run anyone and everyone off the road. Even when you're not in a taxi you're in danger of their wrath. And don't even get me started on them trying to convince foreigners they can't use their card to pay for short trips (less than 10,000) and then not wanting to give change.

If you talk to them you'll learn that many of them used to work at this or that company but got laid off. They have families, kids going to hagwons and faces to save for their forever nasty wives disappointed at her salary man having become just a taxi ajeossi.

One ajeossi talked bitterly about miguk saram (Army) spending what they earn in a month just in 1 night. That was around Yeongsan. I never had much trouble though getting cabs waving 20.000 won around.

we were studying about poems in one class. they had to give me some adjectives to describe korea. one student said 'small", which was good, so i wrote it on the board.

about half the class then went in uproar shouting "KOREA IS NOT SMALL! KOREA IS NOOOOOT SMALLLLL!", which was...weird. i asked them to name me a smaller country, and they couldn't, so...

it's so weird. i mean, this is a grade 5 class, and they are the upper level, so they are quite intelligent. where do they get this weird nationalistic nonsense from such a young age?

they get this nationalistic nonsense from their textbook and classes. they're taught all this shite in their social studies and history classes. stuff like how korean is the most scientific language, and how to hate the japanese. the terms 'uri minjok' (our race) and 'uri nara' (our country) appear all over those books.

then you have this type of thing, just look at those pictures drawn by school kids in korea. can't imagine having that much hate in my heart for another country i've never even been to as a child:
http://orientals.web.fc2.com/paniren.html

That's why I've been saying all along not to have any children, especially them Korean 'uns!

we were studying about poems in one class. they had to give me some adjectives to describe korea. one student said 'small", which was good, so i wrote it on the board.

about half the class then went in uproar shouting "KOREA IS NOT SMALL! KOREA IS NOOOOOT SMALLLLL!", which was...weird. i asked them to name me a smaller country, and they couldn't, so...

it's so weird. i mean, this is a grade 5 class, and they are the upper level, so they are quite intelligent. where do they get this weird nationalistic nonsense from such a young age?

they get this nationalistic nonsense from their textbook and classes. they're taught all this shite in their social studies and history classes. stuff like how korean is the most scientific language, and how to hate the japanese. the terms 'uri minjok' (our race) and 'uri nara' (our country) appear all over those books.

then you have this type of thing, just look at those pictures drawn by school kids in korea. can't imagine having that much hate in my heart for another country i've never even been to as a child:
http://orientals.web.fc2.com/paniren.html

Oh yeah, the nationalist BS seems to peek at around 5th grade, but... I've noticed that for all but the most die-hard nationlists the sentiment is usually bulldozed by Pokemon, Nintendo Switches, Mario, Anime, Sushi etc.

Couple of weeks ago, we did the lesson on green energy. Now, there's no way to fill up 4 periods with nothing but those ridiculous expressions, so we talked about air pollution and how nobody can dispute that, on average, most of it is domestically produced. I explored the reasons why, discussing Korea's geography, lack of wind, reliance on coal, overuse of aircons and believe it or not, it actually went down pretty well. My CT was on board as she also believes most of the air pollution comes from Korea. The feeling I got was that most of the students agreed that it made perfect sense that while China was to blame for a lot of the air pollution during certain times of the year, on average, Korea itself is responsible.

One boy refused to accept it, even after showing an interview with the head of the Korean national environmental group, who collaborated with NASA. He said that in social studies, he was taught that over 90% of the pollution comes from China and he was sticking with it. <meh> Kid was probably just screwing around to get a reaction, but whatever, most of the 6th grade students seemed to be showing signs of being more critical thinkers than the students of previous years.

What I have noticed, and that irritates me to no end, is this recent attempt at decivilizing other Asian nations like China, SE Asia and even Japan, with regards to strange foods. Suddenly, people in SE Asia all eat cockroaches, Japanese people eat some weird worms and Chinese people are now the ones eating dogs, cats and whatnot.
I asked about 개고기 and magically, everyone seems to have totally forgotten about it and is repulsed that anyone would eat it. 5 years ago, I had half the class telling me 개고기 맛있다! Heck, a few years ago when my wife moved to a new school, that thought it would be a great idea to invite/obligate her (a Muslim woman) to attend her welcome dinner with the other teacher at a 개고기 restaurant. My wife sat there feeling completely sick, while the other teachers all scarfed down dog... 5yrs later, it's suddenly passé and Koreans were never that 'primitive'.

we were studying about poems in one class. they had to give me some adjectives to describe korea. one student said 'small", which was good, so i wrote it on the board.

about half the class then went in uproar shouting "KOREA IS NOT SMALL! KOREA IS NOOOOOT SMALLLLL!", which was...weird. i asked them to name me a smaller country, and they couldn't, so...

it's so weird. i mean, this is a grade 5 class, and they are the upper level, so they are quite intelligent. where do they get this weird nationalistic nonsense from such a young age?

they get this nationalistic nonsense from their textbook and classes. they're taught all this shite in their social studies and history classes. stuff like how korean is the most scientific language, and how to hate the japanese. the terms 'uri minjok' (our race) and 'uri nara' (our country) appear all over those books.

then you have this type of thing, just look at those pictures drawn by school kids in korea. can't imagine having that much hate in my heart for another country i've never even been to as a child:
http://orientals.web.fc2.com/paniren.html

The website isn't working for me, but I'm interested in seeing the pictures.

Where do they get it? They get it from the same place as many of you get YOUR sense of superiority.

I'm going to go out on a limb, but I'm going to guess most 5th graders aren't going to have the most advanced sense of geography and might react similarly. Think back to your time in 5th grade (yes, yes, I know in your mind everyone was perfectly behaved and devoid of nationalism. Please. Well at least for those of us who went to school during the 90s). If someone had bashed America, I don't think we would have reacted too well either. I mean when I was in 3rd or 4th grade that was during Desert Storm and patriotism was running high. Same with 9/11.

Where do they get it? They get it from the same place as many of you get YOUR sense of superiority.

please take your nationalistic insecurities elsewhere.  this is a ranting/venting thread.  treat it as such.  unless you're ranting about your inferiority complex, then it's fine. 

Where do they get it? They get it from the same place as many of you get YOUR sense of superiority.

I'm going to go out on a limb, but I'm going to guess most 5th graders aren't going to have the most advanced sense of geography and might react similarly. Think back to your time in 5th grade (yes, yes, I know in your mind everyone was perfectly behaved and devoid of nationalism. Please. Well at least for those of us who went to school during the 90s). If someone had bashed America, I don't think we would have reacted too well either. I mean when I was in 3rd or 4th grade that was during Desert Storm and patriotism was running high. Same with 9/11.

i wasn't bashing korea. we were writing a poem about korea, as a class. one of the students suggested "small", which was accurate. i'm used to the dumb nationalism here as the next guy, but most of  the class suddenly in uproar that someone suggested korea being small was somehow a dig at korea, was a weird reaction. we definitely learnt about country sizes, etc at primary school, e.g. how many times the uk can fit inside the usa" etc. nobody got their knickers in a twist about it

Again, Where do they get it? They get it from the same place as many of you get YOUR sense of superiority.

The place where you presume you are entitled to sit in judgment of them and that your worldview is the correct one an they are wrong for not agreeing with it. The same place we all do.

This is simply to get you to understand that we all possess that same thing in one or another. The same sense of cultural-center that you see in how they express is being expressed right here by all of you. The same kind of presumption. The same shock and denial that you are in any way acting but the correct way. You're doing it. I'm doing it. Everyone is.

But yeah, look at others responses. In some cases there is a serious level of arrogance, presumption and condescension that is just like any Korean nationalism you get. The inherent belief in their superiority and the inferiority of them.

Look at the site kobayashi linked to- http://orientals.web.fc2.com/
It bashes Korea and China for nationalism and ethnocentrism by using...nationalism and ethnocentrism, just in a different form.