What initially attracted you to this kind of work, in these places?
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How well does it pay? Who pays the tuition for your students, and what’s that like?
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WARNING! TEXT WALL AHOY!
It gave me a hiatal hernia and constant bowel trouble. On the other hand, it also kept me employed.
Back when I was a teen in the late 80s I hit the life of the weeaboo pretty hard so going to Japan was always a thing I wanted to do. But being chronically underemployed in an eternally economically depressed province of Canada meant that that dream was impossible to realize. One day in 1998 after a 14 hour shift stuffing fliers into newspapers I decided to go to university.
Once I got out of that the bill came in from the government for the student loans and here I was still in a poor province where there were no jobs and me having n way to finance a move across Canada. A Korean Canadian friend had just gotten a job as the Canadian end of a recruiting company and I was ripe for the picking.
Also, there was a woman. We were together for five years so I guess that choice turned out to be the right one.
If I give you a flat in-Canadian-dollars estimate of my salary you’d be well right to gasp at a middle-aged man earning similarly to a kid in a clothing store. The big difference is that the cost of living in this part of the world… even in Seoul and even in Japan… is far lower than back in Canada. While here in Korea the boss footing the bill for the housing is a huge draw even in Japan, where I had to pay my own way, I was taking about 2/3 of my monthly salary home as fun times money.
However, if you have a family of four to feed this isn’t going to be enough. You will be in a better position than your equal back home. For example, my total monthly bills last winter were CAD$40 on average. Maybe about $20 in the summer if I had the air conditioner running non stop. Those would be triple digits back home. The married expats here tend to supplement their salaries with private tutoring. That’s where the big bucks are. (It’s legal for someone on a spousal visa but for me it isn’t. That doesn’t stop others on the same visa. Under the table tutoring is a pretty big market here. Especially in Seoul.)
The kids parents pay their tuition. Adults can sometimes get their company to pay for theirs. The amount can vary depending upon neighborhood and brand name of the hagwon/ eikaiwa/ buxiban. My current job is contracted to elementary schools and we usually deal with the poorer kids so the tuition is relatively low. Last I looked it was something like $80/mo.
Last I worked in a hagwon in Seoul and got to peek at the fees it was closer to $260/mo, and that was in one of the less affluent neighbourhoods back in 2006.
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Author Richard Morgan has often said that the heavy violence in his science fiction novels (such as Altered Carbon) are the result of his years as an ESL Teacher in interviews.
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Thankfully the parents have been mostly groovy and cool. Or they’ve lacked the English skills to speak to me.
The inappropriateness has come from these sources: Teen girls, random drunken businessmen, Korean friends, and my employers.
Teen girls tend to be very aware that a woman’s main social currency here is in how much they appeal to men and they can express that in really inappropriate ways. “Do you think I’m pretty?” and any variation on that. They’re looking for that confidence boost but I’m wrong person to get that from.
Short Drunken Businessman in Seoul Story:
I’m strolling back to my apartment in Suyu-dong and the stumbling fellow going in the other direction saw me and shouted hello. Being stupidly Canadian at the wrong times I said hi back and shook his extended hand. He told me his life history involving studying English in America. Smiling politely I managed to free my hand that he was shaking the entire time. He then asked, “Do you like Korean girls?”
My first thought was that he was about to invite me to the “massage” place in the basement of my apartment building. Then he said, “My wife really likes foreigners.”
While my mind was racing for a good excuse to escape he pulls out his flip phone and shows me her picture. A lovely lady indeed. He then dials her and tells her, “Honey! I have a foreign man here!” I’m then handed the phone and we have a polite thirty second conversation when it’s obvious she wasn’t having any of his shit that night. Handing it back I bowed my farewell and took off into the dark while she was berating him.
About the others:
- Japanese boss told me that I should have babies with Japanese women because “hafu” as they’re called there, are so pretty. She then suggest that I date my partner teacher. My boss was in her her 70s and had some severe empty house syndrome. Lovely lady normally.
- Boss in Cheonan took me to a noraebar. For the curious: It’s like a noraebang / karaoke room except with hookers. Thankfully the machine broke and I noped the hell out of there. He would occasionally tell me he hated his wife and really wanted me to go to whoring with him.
- Korean friend called me up one night. Said he was with a woman who really wanted to have sex with a white man. “And she doesn’t care that you’re fat.” We totally naturally fell out of touch after that.
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Anything you’ve learned through this going to transfer to your next great adventure?
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I’ve never lived in a culture other than my own for an extended period of time. I’m curious if you’ve had any insights that surprised you - whether about yourself, your own culture, or the cultures that you’ve been immersed in…
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When you call yourself an ESL Edutainer, is that because they already know English or because they aren’t learning English? I’m interested in your role and why you don’t see yourself as a teacher.
I recently had a friend who returned and was thankful that their checks cleared the last two months they were there.
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More text wall ahead… I’ve added a picture of sexy P-Stu to make it easier to skim.
Lessee…Life is too short to be both stuck in a shitty job and to be stuck surrounded by shitty people and you should skip out of there as soon as you can.
And I’m actually a really simple guy who is satisfied with a roof over his head and food in his tummy and cars, houses, wide screen TVs, and all of the other trappings of modern society are for suckers.
Also, this;
You will fail in life. A lot. So it goes.
People dream, hope, fear, hate, laugh and cry the same everywhere. It’s the expression of these basic human things that are the only difference. Sometimes their expression runs counter to yours. Sometimes their expression of those things can bring a lot of negative consequences to you. While you’re both coming from the same core, understanding and sympathy can only go so far and conflict is inevitable. Thankfully most people want a fight less than you do and it’s only a special brand of loony that wishes to escalate.
That having been said, there are a lot of little things that I’d like to steal from this part of the world and force upon everyone back home. Japan knows how to have a poo and take a bath properly. Korea knows that you can trust adults to sit at a table with a fire in the middle of it. Taiwan knows that a little scooter is much better than a car.
Also: A centralized urban environment is far superior to a suburb.
And if I’m being perfectly honest about myself: Being here and getting to know actual Asian women burned all of my geekboy Cho Cho San fantasies out of my head. While a lot can be said about how women get by in this part of the world, it turned out they’re full human beings too and not just a bunch of pretty things that look good in small skirts.
Also… man, Asia made me realize that my people in Halifax are pretty criminal. Here I can stroll down the darkest of alleys without fear. Back home I can’t stand at a bus stop in broad daylight without worrying someone is going to throw something at me from their passing car just for the laughs.
ESL is a for-profit business. While you can find an employer who cares about education at the end of the day the boss wants the money.
This is very obvious in the hiring. If they wanted an actual teacher with a degree and experience they’d hire actual teachers at a competitive wage. Instead they seek out unemployed grads with loans to pay off that they pay minimum wage to. Yeah, they cast their lines into that sea of potential employees hoping they’ll net a natural born teacher, but they’re generally getting what they paid for: Someone inexperienced with kids, with no life experience, and no idea how to do what they’re being asked to do. Japan is slightly better than the rest of Asia because getting some training is the norm and not the exception. But they still run their businesses like it’s a McJob and not education.
Companies like Pagoda and Berlitz might stuff you into a suit for the look of a professional, you’re not. You’re a prop. Think of going into a Chinese restaurant. Imagine there’s not a single East Asian face on the staff. While you’re not racist, your expectations have been busted and you’re not going to really enjoy your sweet & sour pork. There’s nothing about sweet & sour pork that requires an Asian face, but people generally think Chinese food = Chinese chef.
It’s the same in ESL. Customers expect the white… and sometimes the black… rarely the Asian… face. The real education gets done by the Korean/Japanese/Chinese teacher because they’re the ones who can actually explain shit. The foreign prop can try hard but in the end it’s largely a wasted effort to educate in an environment where education wasn’t a concern when you got hired.
Like your friend, this can lead to a lot of abuse of authority over foreign staff. From getting lots of shit over not being able to do a job the boss has effectively made impossible to do, to not getting paid because they know you’re not going to stick around to fight them at that point.
This makes a lot of people bitter. They come in thinking they’re gonna be a teacher but instead they’re a dancing poodle and get treated like one. This stress more often than not gets taken out on the kids. And most of this kids, since they spend a significant amount of their lives in the company of adults who hate them, hate those adults in turn. So even if you come in meaning well, they’re simply going to treat you like crap because that’s all they know.
I’m not sure when I decided, “Fek it!” I think I was in Japan. First Christmas play where I was forced into a too small, can-see-the-circumcision, Santa costume. Despite the kids knowing it was me the second I spoke, they were still happy. Crap costume. Crap Santa. They were still enjoying themselves.
Now to me my ESL job is just a job. A way to finance the rest of my life. But I decided to approach the job with the mindset “Don’t make them hate you. Don’t make them go home hating foreigners. Dan’t make them hate learning. Don’t make their lives worse. Don’t make them into bad adults.”
Thus, edutainment. Keep it light, and hope some information sticks.
This isn’t to downplay the people who decide that they’re going to respond to an industry that undermines their employees and claimed goals by getting a degree and becoming actual teachers. But they also quickly move out of the for-profit gigs and into public schools, international schools, and universities. For them it has become a calling. That’s great. For me, it’s how I can afford a trip to Tokyo and all I can do is not make a poor situation worse for the students.
Also, Edutainment is a dope BDP record.
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How fluent were you in Japanese, Korean, and Chinese when you started? Did I read your previous responses correctly that you had a local co-teacher to translate?
What impressions did you get of what the locals think about westerners generally? (Other than that they find white men attractive. 
)
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I’m only slightly less shitty now. I can get through my life pretty well but if I can’t handle it on my own usually someone is willing to lend me a hand.
In Korea everyone has some degree of English skill so it’s waaaaaaaaay too easy to just bumble along with tourist Korean. And when a strange drunken businessman decides to talk to you, it’ll mostly be in English. When I do put in an effort to speak the local language people either respond with a torrent of syllables… Like getting hit in the face with a language fire hose… or they act like the dog just started talking.
Drunken Korean Businessman Story 2
Sitting on the number three line heading north a couple of older fellows who were obviously in the military together in their youth had parted with some ironic salutes. The one left behind started chatting with me. He wanted to tell me all about his time in Desert Storm. Everyone in the car was smirking at the poor foreigner stuck with the old drunk who can barely speak English. Then a college age fellow came over and asked if the old guy was bothering me. He was speaking with very good English.
“Oh, no. It’s cool. Thanks.”
I was kind of irritated by that. Here’s the thing: Old drunk man with poor language skills was more willing to talk to me than the dozen odd other people there who could understand me better. “Yay!” for him and “Screw you!” for them.
My big mistake with learning more Korean was the previously mentioned ex GF. Her English is almost fluent and so I became far too reliant on her to do the heavy language lifting. By the time we had broken up I was about a year away from having my fill of Korea and stomping out in a rage and going to Japan. When I came back the second time my plan was to live as a hermit saving my cash so relearning what little I knew was never on the table. Unfortunately, dad’s death and my need to go home kind of made the plans pointless. Because Canada is so expensive when my boss asked me to come back because my replacement turned out to be bug fuck crazy, I had to take it.
The hermit plan worked. The money plan didn’t. So it goes.
My biggest problem with Chinese was that I failed my course in university and I wasn’t in Taiwan long enough to pick much up. Though I did discover a place on Earth where a Big Mac is not called a Big Mac. That was embarrassing for everyone.
Japan… Japan is a place people have always gone to, not a place people leave from. The pressure to speak a second language is minimal for them. Like high school French back home. As an expat there you got to learn the language or your life will be horrid because no one can talk to you. And a lot of the signs tend to be only in Japanese. I never took any formal lessons but my co teachers were more than happy to tear apart all of the hard work I put into my kanji writing. I had gotten to the point where I could clumsily flirt but that was it.
Sadly being exotic can only take a guy so far. You need to be able to talk. That’s why a lot of expats get involved with dedicated ESL students instead of the other girls and boys here. But the fellows I know who have put in the effort to get conversational? Their Tinder swiping fingers are very fit.
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Do they poo magically differently or is this a discussion of musical heated toilets with bidets (which I fully support for a desire for a clean bum)?
I wish we could have onsens.
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I have my suspicions about the first but I meant the second.
I’m a squat toilet convert. They’re getting harder to find though. I do feel a bidet is a superior anus cleaning and does everything to keep skids marks from appearing. Having the place you shit being in a separate room from the place you brush your teeth is also a good idea.
Plus…
This is so obvious an idea that it should have been the global standard already.
Just one more thing I’d force upon Canada should I become dictator.
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That’s ingenious.
And yeah, kinda depressing that nobody’s done something like that in, say, water-starved Southern California. Flushing with graywater! Of course!
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Hi. I just realized today is the 19th so I’ma start and let William George finish up any questions that are still out there.
I’m a theatrical lighting designer that has basically had every kind of job one can have with two degrees in theatrical lighting. Architectural, television, films, theatre, dance, opera, industrials, museums, just about everything but theme park lighting. I’ve lit the spectrum, from tiny shows nobody ever saw to events that everyone worldwide has seen and worked with an amazing spectrum of lighting people that I am often astonished that they even talk to me, let alone ask my opinion.
These days I’m doing fewer shows and working as a theatre consultant in New York. When people hire an architect to design their theatre the architect doesn’t usually know anything about theatres. They don’t know that Miss Saigon has 17 tractor trailers that need to be dealt with when there’s only two doors at the loading docks. They don’t understand how seating rows can have 20 chairs but people don’t sit directly behind someone else’s head. They don’t know to ask about how much power is needed or how it’s going to to get used. So they call people like me who sit in meetings and translate between theatre people and architects and vice versa.
For someone who loves theatre but loves to see their kids, it’s absolutely perfect. I clock in and out like a normal job but then talk about theatre stuff all day.
So, what skill is indispensable? Knowing about deadlines. Which ones are vital and what can be sacrificed to make the deadline. I come from a world where there is a show at 8 PM. Sick actor? Find an understudy. No power? Get some flashlights. Costumes caught on fire? We’re doing a show in street clothes. What’s important to the task at hand and how can we make things happen safely?
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Here’s some stuff that I lit at one point or another (or am in the midst of):
https://www.greenhill.org/page/arts/marshall-family-performing-arts-center
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Ask you anything, huh? Can I get a job with you‽
More seriously, I was a Theatre Arts major in college, and you’re basically doing what I wanted to be doing. One of my professors was Barth Ballard, who at the time was a lighting director at the Old Globe Theatre, and I could die a happy man if I’d ended up with his job. In the end, I moved to Hollywood when my brother offered me a PA gig on one of his movies, which started me on my current career.
But the calculus involved in taking that job and moving to L.A. without getting my degree was based upon not knowing how hard it might be to make a living in the theatre. You work in NYC, and I imagine the money must be okay, though I have no doubt the job market is insanely competitive. Is that right? How did you break in? Did you have to starve for a while? I know the San Diego theatre scene isn’t remotely close to the size of New York’s, obviously, but still… I can’t stop wondering if I shouldn’t have moved, if I maybe should have stayed in my favorite city doing what I love best.
After high school I was roommates for a while with another theatre nerd. He ended up the Artistic Director of the San Diego Civic Light Opera at Starlight Bowl for a decade or so, which was probably a dream job, but that ended up being quite a money pit. The company, which had been a going concern since 1945, went under in 2011, after he and many members of its board of directors had sunk buckets of their own money into it for years, trying to help keep it afloat. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlight_Bowl_(San_Diego)
So anyway, I hope your experience has been different! Whaddaya think? Is live theatre a viable career path? Or only if you’re extremely lucky?
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Theatre as a whole is, well, both competitive and not. There are shows I wish I’d lit, people I wish I’d had a chance to work with, and, at the same time, I’m thrilled at the lighting by others in shows I wish I’d done. It’s a super small field in New York especially, and everyone knows everyone and where their strengths are. Basically, if you last long enough in this town you are likely to end up where you belong. But it’s a question as to if you want to last that long.
I got out of grad school in 2003. Did TV for a few years at a grand sum of around 32K a year. Gross. So after grad school was when I got my ramen fix. I left when I realized I was sick of going to work at 4 in the afternoon and missing all my friends shows and ended up in architectural lighting where I started at 40K. But this time with healthcare and going home at normalish hours. But that lighting is about as far from theatre as you can get, there are a lot of people who are going to get in your way to stop your design from being what you want. Contractors, architects, owners, they all have a say in what ends up being built.
I only ended up here because it’s the sister company to the architectural lighting side and that took 11 years of living in New York. I don’t think I would have been remotely prepared to do this job straight out of grad school. But you’re right, it’s a very limited job market. We are one of the bigger firms with a well established clientele and 40+ years and have just two lighting people. I can name offhand the other five or six within a few hundred miles from here.
As to if live theatre is a viable path, absolutely. You just have to be very, very well aware of what you are giving up. Some limited statistics:
Of the 18 people in my grad school class:
12 of us still live around the New York area,
At least 10 of those are in entertainment,
Five of those are active theatre designers full time, the rest are professors, television, film or theatre consulting.
I am one of two in the area that owns a free standing home. Condos, coops, and the majority are still in apartments.
I am one of five that got married and is still on their first marriage.
I am one of three that have children.
So, yes, it’s absolutely possible to have a career in theatre. And it’s possible to have all the stuff you want, family, a house, whatever, you just have to be aware that it might take some time and the hours along the way are going to be awful. I know people who are still living check to check after 20 years in the business, it can be really stressful.
That said, there is literally nothing stopping you from doing theatre where you are if you have any interest. I light shows at my local 150 seat community theatre with pleasure and they are happy to have interested people help out. They pay probably isn’t there but then again, neither is the stress to make everything perfect or get burned out. Why, look at this, I see the Coronado Playhouse doesn’t have a resident lighting designer. See if they want any help if you want to scratch that itch.
The past is the past, the choices you (and I) made to not freelance in theatre and starve and to do other things left a spot for someone else to do that. I don’t regret not freelancing at all but I also recognize I’ve been very lucky in life. But there’s nothing that says you can’t dip your toes back into it and see if it’s worth exploring again. Let a few people in your industry know you do theatre on the side and I’m willing to bet they know of a production that needs a designer.
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C’mon, It’s okay. You can fess up to us. When did you sell your soul to Satan?
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