Job Discussion Forums

[merlin]

http://news.google.com/news?q=jesse+james+brazil&hl=en&lr=&sa=N&tab=nn&oi=newsr
MOD EDIT
It does make one wonder about all those wierdos we meet at various foreigner pubs, bars and staffrooms and dare I mention online?

Think back to the people you've met in all your years of teaching. How many were fleeing something? Debt usually, perhaps child support? The IRS? Life in general? But then there're those who you just know have darker skeletons in their closet. Theft, assault, darker things perhaps that I won't get into?

If you share accomodation do you have a lock on your bedroom door? Is it a stong one?

[merlin]

ok, I'll bite:

I do believe I've heard some EFL types who claim to drive sportscars and have supermodel girlfriends. Hard to tell if they're just shovelling it deep or if they have ... other sources of income.

[moonraven]

I have met a fair number of folks in EFL as well as in other academic disciplines who were running away from the law in the US.

There are many more who are running away from themselves.

[Deconstructor]

Running away from things is human action par excellence. What else is new?! I've met many FTs who were out there not as much running away, but searching. I was one of them. As far as people with murky pasts go, well, there are those too.

[basiltherat]

... and, going off topic a bit, there are, I hear anyway, plenty of so-called teflers around who are involved in clandestine activities in their host country. There's an english course here where rumour has it that teachers are either working for the US State Dept or involved in even more sinister activities. Kinda makes me chuckle. Are they just shovelling it or not. I dunno, but it makes life interesting, I suppose, to make colleagues think your 'special' and not a real teacher (ie spy ?).
basil

[Roger]

Weirdos - my label for them, maybe you find them "normal" - I have personally met include:

A 40-something with a ponytail and a local wife in China that was roughly 15 years his junior;
eventually I learnt from him he had divorced his American wife so he could marry a Chinese national. Not unusual, but listen to what this guy had to say about why he did this: He was a practising Latter Day Christian, maintaining privileged rapport with his former wife and their children; his CHinese wife didn't know she was now another Mormon.

Then there was that guy who retired from police work at age 55 or so, to teach in China; his wife came over to check out the situation on the ground with a view of following her husband for good. The good missus was satisfied with what she saw in China, then sold their property back home and was preparing to move house to the Far East... while her hubby in the meantime was chasing skirts. So successfully, indeed, that he ended up having to marry a girl half his age (she was actually one of my close friends who used to make phone calls to my and his apartment from Shanghai...). My friend hurriedly needed a divorce, and got it after paying through his nose. Now he is well over 60, and I guess, stranded somewhere in China.

Another one told me he had a stun gun on him - to ward off those obnoxious Chinese in the mean streets of Shenzhen...

You seldom fail to be embroiled with one of them in a heated debate on moral/political values; not that I am looking for such discussions - they get foisted on me and anyone else.
So this guy who came over4 with his wife who was imparting some of her specialist medical skills to Chinese doctors told me who he voted for, and why, and that China had best follow America's "democratic" traditions. Why was that? So that Chinese could move freely and go abroad, just like Americans could. When I pointed out that his wife was in fact working at a hospital that had generated headlines in the western press years ago with its practice of harvesting body parts from executed prisoners he said he was glad the Chinese did away with useless social parasites and slime... Meanwhile he also wanted to know where to pick up a local girl for a romantic afternoon somewhere away from his and his wife's apartment...

[kcat]

Whoa. I always felt like most of us were just trying to deal with our miserable student loan debts or save money as we come from expensive places with tough job markets (often people do)...

[moonraven]

Latin America gets a fair number of the types that basil mentioned. The Peace Corps used to be infested with them--which is why the Peace Corps was kicked out of many Latin American countries.

A number of the current ringers are rejects from the CIA who have somehow justified coming to Latin America to practice up on their spying techniques--I suppose in the hope that they'll be given another shot?

But the biggest majority of these kinds of escape artists are on the run because they didn't pay child support. And then there are those who didn't pay their taxes. And then there are those who combine several scenarios.

[sigmoid]

[Stephen Jones]