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travellingscot · Joined: 27 Jan 2003 Posts: 64 Location: UK/Eastern Europe

Living in a "Poor" country certainly opens your eyes. Despite mineral water selling for 0.25 euro per 1.5 litre bottle,i've seen teachers fill up a bottle free from a dispenser at work,whilst many Bulgarians walk 30 minutes or more to fill large containers free from open-air supplies (Shop price under 1 euro).Toilet rolls get stolen so frequently that many toilets only give a few sheets at a time-most people i know here carry packs of travel tissues. Perhaps this could be a new topic like "The meanest things you've seen" either socially or at work ?

On the original topic of saving money,i don't think it's possible here in Bulgaria unless you work for the British Council or do 40+ contact hours per week (Tried it for a short while and didn't have time to spend money, but started to forget what day it was which didn't impress my students!).

Glenski · Joined: 15 Jan 2003 Posts: 12844 Location: Hokkaido, JAPAN

Ok, I've since had the time to dig into that web site I mentioned.
http://www.mhlw.go.jp/english/database/db-l/index.html

Here is a quote from the May monthly listing.

merlin · Posted: Thu Aug 11, 2005 8:25 am Post subject:

dmb · Joined: 12 Feb 2003 Posts: 8397

woah that's mean. I worked with a guy who flew into a temper tantrum because the school wouldn't replace a light bulb for him. He eventually forked out and bought one. When he left the school accommodation he took the light bulb with him.
(just out of interest Merlin where was the guy from? In the ME you come across alot of stingy people. The Scots have a reputation for being stingy, but in my experience the stingiest are our southern neighbours-the English)

merlin · Posted: Thu Aug 11, 2005 9:39 am Post subject:

Oh, he was a local, not a teacher. The question was the meanest thing you've ever seen, not necessarily the meanest TEFLer.
But it's not like Czech is a 3rd-world country or anything. Seemingly perfectly normal neighborhood but every morning theres this guy with his plastic bag. Incidentally the handsoap guy in the airport was also Czech - a soldier returning from a mission abroad and happy to be bringing home the spoils of war, I guess Wink

.

The interesting thing is those soldiers get a lot of money when they go abroad and the retired guy has a modest but livable pension - so it's not like they are poor or anything. Just plain mean.

It's a disease.

Gordon · Joined: 28 Jan 2003 Posts: 5309 Location: Japan

Merlin, that isn't mean, it's downright nasty.