by Chris Gladis

When NOVA collapsed back in October, I found myself, for the first time, in a situation for which I was not prepared: involuntary unemployment. If you haven’t had the opportunity, I certainly don’t recommend it.

At this point, I was faced with the task of looking for a new job, and a terrible truth occurred to me: I may not be as employable as I think I am. Somehow, I didn’t think that having NOVA as the last entry on my resume wouldn’t be very appealing to a new employer, all things being equal. Even with seven years of experience, I figured that I needed more. The trouble was that, while I thought I was a good, creative teacher, I had no proof.

One of the burdens of being an English conversation teacher in Japan is that companies such as NOVA, Aeon, ECC and Berlitz don’t require any actual training in TESL. As far as I can tell, the only real qualification necessary is a Bachelor’s degree, and there’s no specific requirement on what your Bachelor’s should be in. In fact, I have often speculated that NOVA, at least, prefers it that way. It’s easier, after all, to get a new teacher to follow the company’s teaching methodology (such as it is) if they don’t know any other way.

This makes us eikaiwa teachers something of a lower caste of English teachers in Japan: a class of instructors with no formal training, questionable motivation, employed by a profit-seeking corporation rather than a Respectable Educational Institution. Add to that the stigma of working for a company that had mismanaged itself into a catastrophic bankruptcy, and I began to fear for my employability, to say nothing of my future as an ESL teacher. Read the rest of this entry »

by Alejo Manrique

read part 1 here

At the same time, I have — as do many a late 20th century man — a love/hate relationship with technological nostalgia. I own not one but two worn-down, 20-plus-year-old Vespa Primaveras (old enough to be considered antique vehicles by traffic authorities). I haven’t gotten around to throwing away my old, mostly inherited vinyl records, and still own a functioning record player. For years I’ve kept a Museum-worthy Inves computer that my uncle bought in the 80s for the price of a car. And yes, I confess, I have gone more than once through my parents’ oh-so-very 60ish library: Latin American boom, Sartre, Camus, the Naked Monkey, the Second Sex, the Third Wave. I hold on to these as relics of eras past, tokens of a mind frame that rests assured that times gone by were inevitably better.

Turns out the music industry honchos know this too and it makes them all go: Yihaa! Because they sure now how to make money of this mind frame; selling the past has been music business’ business from day one, its DNA. Bottle up something that happened once and sell it to be recreated over and over again. Read the rest of this entry »

by The Baby Boomer

We took the pledge in an Italian restaurant in the North End, basking in our achievement of just completing the Boston Marathon. That race wasn’t even four hours old, none of us had even showered, and yet here we were agreeing to run the New York marathon six months hence.

Boston is the most prestigious marathon in the running world. The old saying is still true: “There are only two marathons in the world that you need to qualify for: one is Boston, and the other is the Olympic marathon.” New York, however, is a people’s race. While my four-hour finishing time in Boston put me well back in the pack, a similar time in New York would place me in the top half of the field. New York typically has two or three times the number of entrants as Boston. The race course touches all five boroughs, including a long run up 1st Avenue and a finish at Tavern on the Green in Central Park. Read the rest of this entry »

by the Principal Traveler

One of the best parts about living abroad is making friends with folks who, back in real life, wouldn’t otherwise enter your world. Like the bonds formed during summer camp, expat friendships are bound by an intensity forged from shared experiences on new turf.

My first mission upon moving to Poland was to find such folks. I had only one month to cement connections with the people in my English teaching program before we were dispersed to our respective towns. Former volunteers from the program had stressed how essential it was to have other Americans to visit throughout the year, since chances for English-speaking companionship in small towns were rare. I set my sights quickly on Pam and Annie, if for no other reason than the fact that we all rolled our eyes whenever Alexa, Carrie, or Ellen from our group whined. We were also the only ones to eat what was put in front of us, no matter what part of the beast it had come from. We could deal with whatever and usually laugh about it, and that was enough. Read the rest of this entry »

by Kelly Ramundo

How long has it been since someone has really listened to you? I mean really and authentically showed interest in something you were saying? WTF?

Last week a message appeared on Facebook from two sisters I went to college with but knew only very casually. They would be in Madrid for three days at the start of a pan-European trip and would love to see me. Being a big fan of showing off my adoptive city, we set a date to meet up Tuesday night for dinner and drinks.

I didn’t really know what to expect from making plans to spend an entire evening with people I’ve had no contact with whatsoever over the last five years, and only very minimal contact during the four years when we shared a campus and little else.

I remembered them as being nice, down-to-earth girls. Not the catty, over-privileged socialite types, nor the complete squares who wouldn’t know how to have a good time even if you locked them in a room with Amy Winehouse and Robert Downey Jr.

Despite my somewhat fuzzily-remembered fondness, on Tuesday afternoon a moment of minor panic struck me. What if we really didn’t have much in common? What if I got trapped in a night-long commitment with people that I now had nothing much to talk about with or didn’t really like that much? Read the rest of this entry »

by Jacki Lewin

Some would argue that swearing is a victimless crime, yet others find it offensive enough to justify censorship in television, music and film. When a celebrity manages to swear on a live television broadcast, it makes national headlines; when the Vice President is caught doing so, it becomes legend. Men excuse themselves when they do so in front of women. One would assume based on observation that swearing is a serious social transgression.

Yet, the content of our speech marks our personalities more than anything else. Leaving aside the aggressive use of swear words — the barbs directed at and intended to insult another person — we are left with what is often called “colorful language.” And in this case I ask, what is the big deal? What is the difference between one word and another? Does swearing only matter if someone is around to hear it? Is avoiding profanity mere politeness to others or is it a matter of self-respect and moral standards, akin to having proper hygiene?

I decided to find out what a week without swearing would do to my language, conversation and sanity. A bit of background: I like swearing and I do it often; it doesn’t bother me when other people do so and I’m not of the opinion that it lowers my character, despite being raised in a society that tells me the opposite. Also, I can successfully self-censor when I’m around small children, your grandmother or a prospective employer. Yet with my friends, in my normal relaxed state, it is altogether different. And let me tell you, much harder. Read the rest of this entry »

by the Principal Traveler

When I found out I would be teaching English in a small Polish border town, I imagined something romantic like Krakow, with a medieval wall and Gothic architecture. But Kostrzyn nad Odra had been decimated in an allied bombing during WWII, and except for the train station and the high school, the rest of the buildings on the main drag were an uninspiring mix of Stalinist concrete apartment blocks. They looked like sets of cubbyhole mailboxes three high that had been plastered shut. The town was proud of the facelift these boxes were receiving, which included bright oranges and purples paintjobs accented with brown and yellow racing stripes.

On my first tour of town, Maciej (MAH-chay), my colleague at school, walked me down the main street pointing out the local sights. “Here is the flower shop, that’s the video store, that’s one of the bordellos, and there’s the bakery,” he stated flatly. Bordello? “Yes, we have eight of them, but they’re mostly for the Germans — very expensive.” We continued onwards toward the edge of town down by the Oder River, one of only three border crossings from Poland into Germany.

Once there, we reached the Bazaar, an open-air emporium of cheap cigarettes, booze, and food that was open 365 days a year. Maciej seemed unimpressed with the overall scene except for the fact that some locals had grown rich quickly by hawking these wares to the Germans at prices a third of what they were in nearby Berlin. “Our town has done quite well in a short amount of time. We learned very quickly after the Communism fell,” he said proudly. I wasn’t sure what to make of all this, but concluded that it was just this Polish town’s way of getting its fair slice of the capitalist pie. Read the rest of this entry »

by Parisa Aryán

It is a cold, hard fact that we adults nowadays have not been brought up to wish and hope freely. As children, all we ever did was wish — wish for a puppy, wish for our parents to stop fighting, wish for a bike just like our neighbor’s, wish upon a star. Children probably spend about 90% of their time hoping for their wishes to come true.

As we grow up, we learn that wishing is dangerous, because a) if they don’t come true it can be painfully disappointing, and b) if they do come true you may find the result to be not what you had expected. So, we finally give in to the monster of fear that feeds on the constant warnings from others and on our own rapidly growing experience in the area. Next thing you know, we are trying to “be realistic” and we accept that a lot of our wishes will simply never come true.

Who knows how fear became such a big part of the average adult’s life? At what point in our lives did we start being so afraid of disappointment that we stopped wishing upon stars? And is it possible to go back? Is it possible to forget the heartache, the pain and the losses and leap blindly into the world of wishing upon stars again? Read the rest of this entry »

by Alejo Manrique

Here’s my new favorite urban legend:

Worried about the current and future state of their business, the honchos of a music corporation round up the dozen smartest teenagers L.A. could provide for a focus group. The reunion happens on one of the rare days when the C.E.O. is actually C.E.O.-ing in his office, so afterwards he comes down for a meet ‘n’ greet with the bright young things. Eager to impress them, he takes the bunch on a tour that ends in the storage facilities of the endless catalog, encouraging them to take home as many CDs as they like. Impolite as only teenagers can be, they all go: “Yeah right” and walk out, turning their backs on unlimited free access to the world’s greatest warehouse of recorded material. What was a teenage wet dream just a decade ago is now as interesting a visit as the accountants’ cubicles on the eighth floor.

Corollaries:
1. This seems like it was bitterly made up by someone sued as music downloader.
2. And is possibly only believed by said corporate music honchos.

But more intriguing: Why does it bother me?

To find that out, you’re going to have to bear with me through yet another “growing up Catholic took away the best of me” grieve fest, only this time I’ll throw in girls, deer and even prison movies. Read the rest of this entry »

by Schuyler Hedstrom

People in conversation are afraid of silence. It’s as if we are unable nowadays to pause and think about what we want to say or ponder the ramifications of what another person has just said. Instead, we instantly jump in with our opinions, thinking as we speak. And instead of filling pauses with silence, we use what modern linguists call hesitation forms. In English these are “um,” “uh,” “well,” and “er.” In Spanish, speakers tend to use “ehhh.” We also have words and expressions which serve the same purpose: giving us time to get our thoughts together. In English we use “well,” “I mean,” and “you know.” In Spanish they are: “pues,” “sabes,” and “a ver.”

One of the most troublesome and potentially obnoxious words to recently gain popularity in the English language is “like.” And I don’t refer to its usages as a verb to show that something is pleasing to you or in similes (e.g. she is like a flower). No, the problem arises when like is used as a filler phrase, a hesitation noise. In Spanish, a similar ubiquitous and frustrating expression is “o sea”.

The problem with like or o sea is that in many cases they become a verbal crutch. Rather than express an idea clearly and confidently, people use these words to stall for time, as hesitation forms. However, like can also be used to distance yourself from what you’re saying. For example: “He is, like, stupid.” Well, is he stupid or is he just like stupid? Like softens the impact of the statement (calling someone stupid) while showing the speaker’s lack of conviction. The speaker sounds non-committal and even a bit wimpy. Read the rest of this entry »