Where the Wild Things Are

I took a bus today. I ended up in a place called Linkou, which means “Mouth of the Forest,” but it felt a lot more like the middle. One minute I was passing noodle shops and KFCs and the next I was in the heart of a forest primeval, wondering just how far into the jungle a $1.50 bus ticket would take me. My tour guide was a guy named William. William, besides speaking passable English and having more than one thing negative thing to say about America’s environmental record, contracts gullible young English speakers out to large Taiwanese private schools for a living. I’m not sure of the quality or quantity of the cream William is skimming off of the top, but he told me he is only managing 10 teachers right now and still manages to afford a painfully skinny secretary named Theresa. Maybe he just isn’t paying her enough.

Anyway, William told me about a teaching job at a private school in Linkou. Being a relative newcomer to Taipei, I don’t realize that being in Linkou equates to being in Alpine, which is a reference only my San Diego readers will understand, and for which I do not apologize. I left from my school, which is called Taiwan Normal University, to meet William. We headed out together at 2 o’clock, and didn’t make it to the school until 4:30. I don’t know what kind of hurry the previous teacher, Eddie, left in, but the school administrators were desperate, and agreed to hire me without a demonstration of my meager teaching abilities. I was slapped into Eddie’s former desk, still sticky with the residue of his hastily removed name tag, and was left to contemplate how to tell William that I just couldn’t handle a 2-hour commute every Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.

In my rather limited experience, business in Taiwan has a tendency to work out in this hasty and informal manner. Contracts don’t appear to be very common, and decisions get made very quickly.