Entry Wounds. Episode 09: Another Brick in the Wall

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16/02/04 10am Ho Chi Minh City
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Pop quiz wise guys: if the chickens have all been slaughtered, then how come I can still buy eggs? Well the answer kills two birds with one stone............The egg comes before the chicken! And I just fitted two bad puns into one sentence, thus doubling my productivity.

There’s been two reasons for the delay in the latest installment. Firstly, I’ve been busy working to patch up some holes in my credit card after almost two months of state enforced unemployment, and secondly I only bother writing, when there is something worth writing about (that’s best for all concerned I think ), and material has been substantially thinner since I haven’t had oodles of time to get up to mischief. Epic apologies for not returning personal e-mails, I am scum.
Anyhow, self deprecation aside here’s my wrap up of the teaching caper, thus far. English is taught mainly as an extra-curricular activity by private institutes for wealthy individuals or their offspring. Alternatively it is taught by some state-run schools within school hours. I work for both types. My day starts at 1.30 in the afternoon at the International Primary School. Four
half-hour classes back to back. I walk in, my Vietnamese Assistant, Mr. Lam shouts orders, and tells me what we’re doing that day. I take a student’s book,and read the speech bubbles in the cartoons. The students repeat after me. We do this a few more times, then I pick out individuals to say the words. I correct
any mispronunciations. Within a half-hour period the class gets through two pages, then we leave, go to the next class and do exactly the same thing. All I do is say approximately 40 words, 40 times in the space of two hours and they pay me $AU20 an hour. It’s criminal. The other classes are with adults in the
evenings, they last two hours and it essentially revolves around me playing a tape and them filling in the answers in their workbooks. This is quite easy as well, and there’s the added bonus of telling adults to shut-up and sit down. In the children’s classes I’m not responsible for discipline or class control, but I have taken the liberty of exercising a pro-active role in this department. Mr. Lam gets to whack a big chunk of wood on the students desks, and the occasional student. From time to time he cracks it, full-force onto a desk making an ear-piercing noise. It creates instant, tense, silence. I call it ‘the
silence of the Lam’, he doesn’t get it. ( I have had one revelation so far, it is that girls are sweet, mature, kind, and polite, and boys are…………..pure driven evil. Henceforth references to discipline only involve males.) The kids aren’t traumatised (from what I can see), they think it’s hysterical to watch another
student getting slapped across the back of the legs, and a minute later the victim is hugging Mr. Lam. This is despite the fact that there’s a poster on the hallway wall denouncing such actions, yet every classroom comes with its own unique whacking stick. My attacks on students are more subversive, a war of
attrition if you will. If a student repeatedly ignores commands, I throw all his belongings off his desk onto the floor, or up-end his bag. While the rest of the class and me laugh at him gathering his belongings.
Pop quiz number 2: A kid’s colouring in the activity sheet, rather than writing in it. What do you do? Answer: Take out all his colour pencils and snap the leads off each of them, then laugh like an evil genius. Mwa ha ha ha haaargh.
The only physical violence I resort to is the always popular ear-flick, and seeing they’re all bare-footed in class, there’s a decent level of toe stamping that goes on. There’s been a few mistakes and close calls however, including the moment when I tried to draw a cross in red pen on a students face, only for him
to turn his head in surprise. The line of red ran in a perfect arc across his cheek bone, and up to his eye, stopping at the base of one of his eyelashes. If he had turned his head anymore I would have harpooned his eyeball, and with the evidence written all over his face, my excuses would have been few. The other
notable casualty thus far has been dear little Van. A tiny little creature, who was either born prematurely or malnourished as an infant. His minute stature makes him especially cute, but beyond this he’s just a little brat. An A-grade smart-arse. In this regard he reminds me of me at school, so I laugh at him first before punishing him. In any case Van as usual was pestering the student in front of him and was unaware that I was standing behind him. So I quickly thrust the assignments in my hand in front of his face to startle him. Instead all I heard was a steadily growing wail from the tiny creature, as he clutched
his ear. Van often ‘cries wolf’ to test teachers so I then whacked his hand away from his ear. It was then that I saw six rapidly forming rivulets of blood forming on the edge of his ear. I was bamboozled at first but it soon dawned on me that Van was sporting six substantial paper-cuts incurred as I dragged the
fistful of paper in front of his face. Ewwwww…. That’s gotta sting! Van has quickly forgiven me, and as I pointed out to him ‘chicks dig scars’ so I’ve actually done him a favour. Although my spin doctoring had little effect considering he’s all of seven years old.

The final in my list of victims you’ll be happy to know is actually a deserving one. A little, rich kid, mumma’s boy at the private institute, who has an extensive history of pushing teachers to the brink. And every time a teacher complains the school pleads with them to tolerate him because his parents pay a
handsome fee for both him and his two younger siblings to attend the school. So far I’ve had surprising success with a rigorous regime of ridicule, death stares, and isolation treatment. By the second class I’d excluded him from all games and had him sitting in the corner of the room like a dunce of yesteryear and mocked him call him a crybaby via mime. By the third class I’d locked him in a cupboard to the class’ ecstatic laughter (assistant included), until he started howling like he was on the set of the Exorcist. How was I to know he was afraid of the dark and claustrophobic? By the fourth class (the most recent) I
attempted to throw him out of the classroom. The tenacious little bastard held the door arches with uncanny strength, and knowing that the only way I could pry him away would be to inflict grievous bodily harm, I relented and told him to go to his seat. He refused and stood facing me in the corner. “Fine then you can
stay there!” I said as I hooked my foot behind his pudgy little ankles and with the help of gravity he came crashing to the ground, forcing his coccyx somewhere up in between his kidneys. The class laughed heartily but I was just beginning. The problem with this little recalcitrant is that he thrives on attention, so
between writhing in pain clenching his butt, he continued to giggle uncontrollably. I decided I wouldn’t stop my tyranny of terror until he stopped giggling. So I grabbed the nearest desk-chair (usual chair with small desk bolted to the side and a steel mesh platform underneath to place bags on.) and placed in over him and sat on it. The bag platform was the perfect height
rendering his entire torso and mid section immobile. He protested between laughing. The other students increased their laughter. I continued the lesson from that position and after a minute or two the students had resumed reading and reciting. The little one under the chair continued to squirm and produce increasingly aggravated grunts.
Me: “So can I pour bread?”
Students: “No, you cannot!”
Me: “Can I pour juice?”
Students: “Ye..no… ahhh”
Me: “Can I pour water?
Students: ye..no..um?
Me: “Yes, I can…look!”

At which point I proceeded to empty the contents of my bottle of water onto the little brats head. His arms wedged firmly between his body and the bag platform, leaving him defenseless. The students and the assistant were in hysterics, the bell rang I stood up felling obliged to take a bow, but decided gloating would
have robbed the situation of it’s spontaneity. He stood up red-faced and angry and probably went home to tell Mummy and Daddy, but I couldn’t give a damn.
There’s hundreds of schools to work for and I figure if his parents are so loaded they can reimburse all the other students parents for wasted learning time. My only concern is finding a way to top last weeks show…. I mean class.

I have however found an antidote to little rich-shits and it comes in the form of the Mai School. A school and shelter for homeless kids. Most of them were abandoned within their first year and miraculously survived long enough to be found and taken to the school. The school trains them with basic education and
skills training, enough to hopefully gain employment. It’s volunteer work, which I figure is the least I can give back to the community considering I get Western wages in a third world country. These kids are shoeless, dirty and live in their only pair of clothes. The younger ones bounce off the walls with bright eyed excitement, and cling to you like you’re Santa at the shopping centre. However the older ones contrast this completely. One girl who’s 12 has been there for five and a half years, and when she was despondent to my introduction and I asked her why she didn’t want to say hello, she stared at the ground and
muttered something in Vietnamese. A Vietnamese teacher nearby translated it for, she had said something like “you’ll just leave like all the others.” Owwwwwww!
There’s a stake of reality to the heart, and she’s right. In a year, chances are, I’ll be on a plane out of here, and then someone else will arrive like they have so many times before, to convince themselves that they earned some Karma brownie points and then leave for greener pastures before the vastness of poverty overwhelms their spirit, and she’ll still be there. So for her there’s also the challenge of emotional survival on top of physical survival. But I still go because despite the bittersweet fact that we’re faux surrogates,without the volunteers they’d all be back on the street, and probably getting
dragged into the sex-slave industry.

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18/02/04 9.00pm HCMC
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While it may have seemed like I had fallen off the face of the Earth, I can assure I have not, however I have been off my own face for approximately one month. This is the trapping of the teaching game, afternoon starts mean that most nights of the week teachers are getting blotto, and when you’re working for two places at once like I am you are adopted by two drinking groups which both have an uncanny ability to alternate nights throughout the week to get plastered. The teaching fraternity single handedly supports a majority of the bars in this city, and there’s a new one popping up every few weeks. The big temptation of it all is that there is always new surroundings to drink in, and a stead supply of new faces to drink with from all over the world. So now for some baseless generalisations of drinkers worldwide, a.k.a. Alcoholic racism.
Good nationalities to drink with: Belgians, Germans, Spanish, New Zealanders, Brits, and the Irish. Australians only just make it onto this list due to a couple of standout characters, however for the most part it seems we’re exporting ignorant, arrogant, belligerent, beer swilling bitches with about as much grace and charm as a sledgehammer with lipstick. Similarly, Scandinavia,
who have some hilarious characters amongst them, also have a generous proportion of aloof and apathetic IKEA employee’s with whom a conversation is like a lobotomy.
Of those that have had me searching for the ‘eject’ button mid-conversation, the predominant countries where they reside are; Russia, India, and America. But to be fair, I am convinced that just as Australia exports obese, offensive, banshees every country has it’s tragic travellers. In fact I suspect many aren’t
so much explorers, but exiles from their own communities, destined to roam the world looking for people who can put up with them. (don’t bother buying a return-trip ticket buddy).

OK, so by night I speak a simplified and superficial International-English creole, then at work I speak a drastically slow and simplified version of English, and throughout the day a combination of wild hand signals and facial expressions. Like a mime with Tourette’s syndrome. So while my English is eroding, my Vietnamese is coming along at a snails pace. I should be illiterate by years end. I’ve taken it upon myself to learn Vietnamese, but it isn’t easy. Unlike English which is spoken worldwide and in greatly varying dialects, Vietnamese is spoken in Vietnam by Vietnamese people. Thus it is very precise in
its use, and locals are not used to approximating your speech. Where as we can easily understand a Kiwi’s demand for “Fush ‘n’ Chups” in Vietnam a similar variability on the language renders it incomprehensible. In combination with this, it is a tonal language, meaning that a single word can have up to eight
different meanings depending upon the tone of your voice! So my first attempt at saying the word ‘woman’ in a public place was met with stark horror and disgust by those around me, and when I asked for the translation I was refused, but from the looks on their faces I can only assume I said something along the lines of
‘I just made love to a wide selection of barnyard animals, and your mother was one of them!”

Conversely the Vietnamese language is full of absolute gems when spoken in English, let’s see, you can spend a night at the Bong Palace, and there’s the Mai Phuc Hotel, the Yu Phuc Hotel and the Long Phuc Hotel (a late checkout policy I assume). There’s the Phuc Yueen Chinese Restaurant (whatever melts ya
butter baby). There’s countless ‘Hung Long’ and ‘Hung Phat’ businesses which goes against the findings of the Ralph 2003 International Sex Survey for Vietnam. For the ladies there’s ‘Hot Toc’ barbers and ‘Dich Lic’ deli’s (mmmmm…salted meats). Oh and what could be better in the tropical heat than swinging in a hammock with a tub of Vietnam’s premier ice-cream; Fanny Ice-cream. And when you’re finished with your Dich Lic salami and you’ve licked the tub of Fanny’s clean, you can turn and politely thank the store-lady by saying ‘Come on you?’
Puerile humour never had it so easy.

Your’s sleazily,
Unh Hung.