Skyrail

Take a rainforest and construct a cable car system to go from the easily accessible by car bottom of the mountain to the middle of nowhere top of the mountain and you have yourself a major tourist attraction. In Cairns such an attraction goes by the name of Skyrail.

After catching a coach transfer at 7:30AM from just outside Yang’s guesthouse we got to the Skyrail terminal at the foot of the mountain we were about to ecologically ascend. Once we had our tickets we browsed the Skyrail shop which had a nice selection of dead spiders and lizard T-shirts with glow in the dark tongues.

The cable cars look like this.

As the car climbed up the mountain the view got better and better.

Yang was unimpressed though. He said that it looked like a calendar and he started pointing out all the different months around us. I knew what he was saying; it's like when you look at people’s holiday snaps of a country you have never been to they often just look like you would expect them too. What with all the images and videos around today sometimes you can feel like you have seen it all before. However, being there is very different to just looking at a picture, you have to pay more for one. I asked him not to look at any calendars of the UK.

We had a stow away.

At the first station, if that is the word, we got off and walked around the boardwalk that goes around some trees and back again.

I have no idea why Yang took this picture.

But then he probably had no idea why I took this one.

I took this picture of him, but he didn’t like it because of armpit hair.

Refusing to delete it, he demanded compensation. So he took this picture of me.

There was a caterpillar wriggling on the thread of a broken spider’s web. We spent a while taking pictures of it.

As we were doing this a large group of Japanese tourists following a guide came our way. The guide said, “Ohh” and pointed out the caterpillar we were photographing. A queue of people started to build up behind us so we decided to leave. Only days later did it actually occur to me that the caterpillar probably quite wanted to be rescued. Unluckily for it the combination of itself and the almost invisible spider’s web floating in the air was much too aesthetic for anyone to think about morals. All it wanted was for someone to pick it up, not for its image to be digitally captured forever in multi mega pixel digital JPGs. Having said that, here’s another picture.

Another cable car took us to the next station, passing this river as it did so.

That was nothing compared to the waterfall that followed.

The next station had a viewing platform right over the waterfall. It also had this strangely placed sign.

The final cable car led to the town of Kuranda. I am not sure what this place was like before the cable car came but it now certainly has a touristy feel. I mean look at this map, it looks just like a theme park.

There were shops selling over-priced koala bride and groom effigies (£15 each) along with all manner of kangaroo things, boomerangs, pencils, pens, posters, artwork, magnets etc etc. There was also an abundance of cake and snack shops, all charging the kind of prices that people only pay when they know they can’t escape. Having said that it was here that Yang ate his first pasty. It was some kind of meat and meat pasty that he started off enthusiastically eating but he gradually got slower until he gave up and threw it away.

We had some time to kill before we went on the next bit of our trip, Rainforestation, a whole menagerie of things rainforesty. Walking around a bit we found a bat sanctuary for injured fruit bats. It was a very small place that you go into and immediately find yourself standing with a whole load of other people in awkward silence staring at some bats. There was a guide making conversation with some people but the problem was it was a charity thing. You feel bad for leaving too soon because its charity and protection, but then you don’t really want to get involved in a long convesation because you are not really that interested. It’s a hard situation. I had a question though, because there was a weird sound and I couldn’t work out which bat was making it.

“No that’s a rooster. It’s over there somewhere,” said the guard pointing into the trees. Ahh that explains it I thought.

Rainforestion began with a guided tour around a zoo. It was a small zoo but the guide was brilliant. To give an example of her briliance, when we got to the kangaroos she said, “These are kangaroos,” and carried on walking. Everything she said sounded as if she had said it a thousand times before; she was knowledgeable and interesting but her delivery made it all sound extremely dull and like she hated her job. She also kept saying things like, “This is the blue tongued lizard. You can probably tell why it’s got that name, it’s because it has a long fleshy blue tongue.” “This is the wallaby, but you can’t see it now because it’s asleep.”

Here are some pictures.

After that it was time for a trip around part of the rainforest in an old World War II amphibious vehicle, or “Duck” as they called it. It was big and slow but could carry about 20 people or so. At the start of the journey the guide/driver stopped the duck to talk about this termite’s nest.

At the same time it looked like God was reaching out to one of the passengers.

This guide was much more enthusiastic and pointed out all manner of interesting things. Like these big leaves.

Red bananas. Then we drove into a lake and saw some lizards.

Along the way there was also the pencil tree, “This is the pencil tree. You can probably tell why its got that name, it’s because the leaves look like pencils.” Then the paper tree, “This is the paper tree. You can probably tell why its got that name, it’s because the bark looks like paper.” Yes, the rainforest can supply all your stationary needs.

After that there was a performance by an Aboriginal dance group. The performance took place on a stage that looked like it was under a big leaf.

The stage itself was at the head of a big snake.

Which was also a no smoking area.

The performance was good but it had that terrible touristy feeling that it was going to turn into them saying, “Ok we need volunteers.” That was exactly what happened. The three volunteers were a really reluctant woman, an enthusiastic Australian guy and a fun Japanese guy. The fun Japanese guy was wearing a great mock Puma T-shirt, I managed to get a picture of it on the way out. Kuma means bear in Japanese.

After the performance there was free time before the coach took us back to Kuranda. People could learn to throw the boomerang, or wander around looking at the animals again. Me and Yang found this bird.

Which was ironically sitting under the sign pointing to the amphibious vehicles.

We were taking pictures of the bird when it said something. “Did it just say hello?” we asked each other. In an effort to get the bird to say it again we started making conversation with it.

Eventually it did say, “Hello” again and Yang got a video of it but sadly I don’t yet have a copy. Here, however, is a picture of Yang taking the video.

Inevitably a queue to this particular attraction started building up behind us.

There were also some rare fruits.

Then it was time to leave, and that was Skyrail.

The next day

The next day I asked Yang if he could remember our last conversation, when I had scared him by coming back in from the bathroom and waking him up. He said he couldn’t remember but that he always speaks Japanese when he gets scared. I hope I don’t develop that habit.

After a few hours of him studying and me browsing through my guidebook for where our next destination should be we left the house and caught the bus to Cairns. Yang had never seen the lagoon at the edge of Cairns, or the big swimming area and beach kind of thing. The name for all this together is the Esplanade, and that is where we went.

We walked along near the lagoon for a while and played Guess The Nationality with the people passing by. Cairns is full of Japanese people, which also added to my feeling of culture shock: everything was in English but it was not England because there were palm trees, it wasn’t Japan either but there were loads of Japanese people. My Lonely Planet guidebook mentioned a nearby modern art gallery with the beautiful description, “Admission Free.” So we went there.

Downstairs in the gallery was a display of impressive Aboriginal art, each picture with its own price tag. Upstairs were a few more displays, including a great video of ants congregating on a plate. The ants were all busily collecting sugar but all together they made up the shape of Australia. The artist had carefully drawn Australia on a plate using sugar and then left it in a garden with a camera filming the plate from above. Since the ants always started from the outside and worked inwards Australia got smaller and smaller as the video progressed. I wondered if you could do the same thing with humans picking up money.

On leaving the gallery Yang happened found the comments book and said, “What’s this?” On learning its purpose he filled in his name, country and then as a comment he wrote one of his favourite English words. It was on the second “i” in the word “Rubbish” that I complained, “You can’t write that!” He finished his comment however and asked me if it was spelt right, it unfortunately was. “Let’s go,” he said.

After the gallery we went to the library until Yang realised he had lost his phone. We called it from a payphone and it turned out to be inextricably in my bag. Later on we found an Internet café to and booked a trip for the next day on a thing called Skyrail, a cable car into the rainforest. The Internet café was called Global Gossip and this franchise turned out to be a big part of our trip. The guy in the Cairns branch was very friendly, he gave me a membership card which could be used as a phone card too and said the Internet was just 1 dollar an hour. Bargain.

Cairns

The first thing me and Yang did was go to Woolworths. If you are from the UK then maybe you can imagine my surprise at seeing a shop with that name in Australia. The logo looks pretty similar to our own Woolworths but the Australian one is a large supermarket instead of… whatever the British Woolworths has become. I was feeling a bit of culture shock, seeing everything in English, looking like the UK indoors but with palm trees and impossibly bright sunshine outside. I was very happy to see reduced Easter Eggs on offer though, since in Japan there is just no such thing as a chocolate egg.

We caught the bus to where Yang lives, and then walked to his guesthouse. Much like where I live in Japan, it is a place for foreign and native people to stay for a few months. There is a shared kitchen, lounge, TV, Internet, toilets and showers. Yang lives in a two-person room but since there was no one else there at the time I could become that second person.

This is his room.

There is only one floor so from his room you can step right into the garden, and all of the ants can make the opposite journey. The place was clean, more or less, but a home only occupied by humans seems a bit impossible in Australia. There were lines of ants busily making their way up and down the wall and every so often a scared gecko would run from the floor to the ceiling with no regard for gravity.

I met a few of the other tenants; mostly Australian and English but there were a few Japanese people too. Yang speaks Korean and Japanese fluently, but he is in Australia to improve his English. Two of the Japanese tenants have the same name and Yang distinguishes them as Masa One and Masa Two. Masa One deserves his first position; he is a very friendly Japanese pharmacist who was really helpful when it came to Yang’s wisdom tooth pain. Masa Two keeps himself to himself, as do the other Japanese tenants who perhaps prefer their rooms to the rest of Australia.

He showed me around the house, introduced me to a few people and then I promptly fell asleep on my bed. I woke up to see a woman standing over me but I think I just ignored her. Not long after that someone was saying hello to me and I realised it was the female manager of the place, who was expecting some money to. Once on my feet she took my money and introduced me to her young daughter who was standing in the corridor, “Nick is from England,” she said. The girl, probably about ten years old, just walked away. “She’s not impressed,” I said.

Yang is now doing a Cyber University course in Japanese, English and Korean. This means that he has to do about eight lessons a week, each of which can take an hour or longer. Since the Internet in his home is so slow he has to pre-download all the videos and audio before he can actually do the lessons. This turned out to be a bit of a problem for our holiday as finding cheap Internet in some places was near enough impossible. While I was sleeping, he studied and then we went shopping.

We went to a even bigger Woolworths near this large swordfish.

I was very happy. For once I understood what was going on, this supermarket was just like Asda, it had Cadburys, it had big cucumbers and it had frozen pizzas. These three items were not my dinner plan, just things that aren’t really available in Japan. With this in mind I suggested we could have a pizza for dinner, Yang agreed but said he didn’t know if the oven in his guesthouse worked.

It did. That evening we ate cheap frozen pizza with some extra mushrooms and cheese sprinkled on top. Sitting on our beds with his small table between us we talked about old times and new. He had only been in Australia for less than a month and was feeling a bit lonely. The people in his guesthouse are friendly but some also have a hint of scariness. Yang was missing the people back in Japan, the people I had seen the day before yesterday, so I told them how they all were: “Fine.”

When it was time to sleep he asked if he could turn on the radio. I foolishly said yes and then he slept while I was stuck with Bon Jovi. The beds had two mattresses on top of each other, which might sound good but I carried on sinking into the middle and whenever I turned the top mattress would slide off the bottom one causing a mini earthquake. At some point I crept to the toilet and then crept back again. However, I woke Yang up. First I heard him say, “Hmm.” in a slightly alarmed way. Then he said, “Niku?” which is the pronunciation of my name in Japanese. I said yes, and he sighed and said, “Bikurishita” which meant he was surprised. I asked him in Japanese if we could turn off the radio, he said “Hai” and turned it off. With Annie Lennox silenced I drifted to sleep.

Day 1

When you play adventure games they are always structured like this: In order to get enough money to buy a spade you must wait till the chef leaves the kitchen of Scum Bar so that you can steal the fish, to give it to the troll, to let you over the bridge so that you can go to the circus and get paid to practice the cannon trick.

Ignoring the troll real life is exactly like this. For me, freshly arrived at Cairns airport I had two missions:

Mission 1. Find where the bus was to the town centre.
Mission 2. Phone Yang.

In order to phone Yang I had to find a shop, buy something to get change for a payphone, find a phone and work out how to use it.

So with a Bounty bar in one hand and some coins in the other I called Yang. The phone rang and he answered but then it cut off immediately. I didn’t understand why so I called him a few more times only for the same thing to happen. I figured out that I only had enough money to text him and not call him, so I sent him a text to say that I had arrived and then got on the bus.

It was about 7am. Yang and me had arranged to meet at the Central Shopping Area in Cairns which is next to the train station. The bus dropped me off at the station where it was painfully obvious that there was no one around. I tried to reassure the bus driver that I was meeting a friend and knew exactly what I was doing but he drove away looking a bit concerned about me. Alone in the car park to the station it was unnervingly quiet. The bus ride had shown me that the central shopping area was rather large and was going to be closed until 9am, meeting anyone in such a vague area was not going to be easy.

As I wondered what to do a man in a uniform of some kind appeared out of the station and looked surprised to see me. I told him that I was meeting a friend and he showed the same kind of concern as the bus driver, “I think you had better call your friend and make sure he is coming.” I asked him where the nearest phone was, fully aware that I didn’t have enough change to actually use one, and he pointed inside the station. Not wanting to appear completely helpless I went over to the phone and looked in my wallet. I was considering pretending to make a call but the man disappeared somewhere and I made my escape onto the main street, taking a tourist map of Cairns with me as I did so.

It was really hot, especially since I was still wearing jeans and lots of other clothes. The streets were empty except for a few people walking slowly and seemingly without purpose up the road. I made my way towards where I thought the front of the shopping centre was. In the heat and not knowing what I was doing it seemed like a long way but I found the big entrance to the mall. Still nothing was open for me to get change to call Yang again. I walked down the side of the Mall for about five minutes and found a coffee shop with an illuminated sign saying, “Open.” Enthusiastically I walked up to the shop and opened the door.

Inside it was cool and humbling but there was no one behind the counter. I eyed the cold water in the fridge cabinet and a man appeared saying, “It’s early” like I had somehow put him out. I wondered for a moment whether the practice in Cairns was for shops to not lock their doors or turn their signs off and people just politely wait outside until 9AM. “I can serve you but my boss hasn’t come in yet so I can’t give you any change,” he said, making me weep a little inside.

So I left that shop and went back out into the heat and people walking aimlessly. I found a row of taxis and decided to ask one of the drivers for change, it went like this:
“Excuse me…”
“It’s early.”
“Yes…but I don’t need a taxi, I was just wondering if you could change a note for some coins.”

I showed him a five-dollar note and he thought about my proposition. He accepted and a minute later I was calling Yang, “Today is a holiday so there are no buses yet,” he told me. Since I had a map and he lived about 40 minutes walk from the centre we agreed to start walking towards each other and meet sort of half way. I couldn’t believe that the phone needed 5 dollars, like £2.50, just to make a call but the call did seem to last for a while.

With this new plan in mind I needed to work out which road I was on. The roads were so long, however, that even finding a road sign takes some effort, and it wasn’t on my map anyway. I walked down another street looking for signs and then asked a large man for directions. He thought carefully about which way I should go. He thought so carefully that he concluded I shouldn’t go there, “You might get lost yourself, better for you to stay here if your friend knows where he’s going.” This was not the advice I was expecting. “There’s a McDonalds open down this road and lots of young people are there.” I thanked him and we parted.

I knew he was giving good advice so I decided to follow it, but only after I had tried not following it for a while. After a few more roads I worked out where I was and started to make my way along a short looking road on my map that would take me to the really long road that Yang must have been walking down. I was feeling pretty exhausted and frustrated at that time. In order to work out where I was I had to keep changing directions and comparing road signs and this meant walking passed people who were idly sitting there watching me. Also it takes ages for the pedestrian crossings to let you cross the road and standing in the blazing sunshine with my heavy backpack was pretty tiring. After walking for about twenty minutes I decided it was time to start following the man’s advice. The map I had was clearly not very good and even the road that I was so certain must be the right one was refusing to have the right name.

I walked back into town, passed the same people who had seen me a dozen times before. I needed to call Yang again but I didn’t have any change left. I went back to the coffee shop, the “open” sign was still blazing but this time the door was locked. The taxi driver I had spoken to before was watching me from his cab, which hadn’t moved at all. I soldiered on and found a little café serving food and drinks. Exhaustedly I bought the only water they had which was nasty tonic stuff that exploded on opening. With the change I called Yang again and realised that I had completely misunderstood Australian money.

I think I just assume that the bigger the coin the more expensive it is. I know that in sterling the 50p is bigger than the pound but the pound is at least thicker. In Australia the two dollar coin is tiny, the 50 and 20-cent coins are enormous and a dollar coin looks much the same as the pound. The phone box did not need 5 dollars like I had thought, it actually just needed 50 cents. I had been making life much much harder for myself. I called Yang and asked him to meet me in the train station, “I’m there,” he said.

I dragged myself back to the station, which was another 10 minutes walk from where I was. He wasn’t there. The station person I had met before saw me and came over:
“Are you ok?”
“Yeah, I’m waiting for my friend.”
“You said that an hour ago.”

He suggested that Yang might be on the other platform so I crossed the bridge and looked for him. Predictably he wasn’t there and so I called him again. There was an obvious communication problem going on; he thought he was where I was, but he definitely wasn’t. “I can see a clock,” he said. I asked the station man who was listening where the clock was, he shrugged at me. “Ok,” said Yang, “just wait.”

I sat down in the station and closed my eyes, it was 9:15AM. “Where you from?” said a voice outside of my head. “The UK,” I replied to the owner of the voice, an old but childlike man who was standing to my left. “Where abouts?” he asked. The old man also turned out to be English but told me that he had been living in Australia for a long time, he had come over on the last boat in 1977. He told me how much he loved Australia, where he had lived and how the sun was good for his skin. I asked him what the holiday was for today and he said, “It’s Easter Monday.” I felt like such an idiot.

“I used to do ballroom dancing till my knee packed in,” he told me with a little jig, “I got lots of medals from it, two gold, one silver, three bronze.” He told me about his professions too, “I do plumbing, acting, builder, electrician, ballroom dancing teacher, car mechanic.”
“You must be busy,” I said.
“No. My son went to Japan.”
“Oh really, what he did do there?”
“He got a scholarship but he went to Canada. He got eight scholarships, two from America, one from Japan and the rest from London. He’s a qualified lawyer now, he’s only twenty three.”

The station person appeared again and asked me if I wanted to lock my bag away while I waited, I nodded enthusiastically. He led me down the platform saying; “I saw that crazy old man was bothering you so I just wondered how to get rid of him. But you can leave your bag in here if you want to.” I hadn’t believed everything the old man had said but I was still quite taken aback but the description of him as, “crazy.” I left my bag in the room and asked the guy for his name in case I needed to find him again. He had a name badge but it was hidden in his pocket because he didn’t, “want the local nuts” knowing his name.

More time passed, more phone calls were made, the old man disappeared and eventually Yang came to rescue me. He had been in the central shopping area, not the central station.

As we walked away Cairns woke up into a normal town that finally made sense to me. Once the doors to the mall slid open from the station I realised that in the light of the working day it is not a ten-minute walk between the mall and the train station, they are actually right next to each other. Outside there were now newsagents, restaurants and shops with open doors and air conditioning. The streets were occupied by cars, buses and taxis driving up and down expectantly. People were walking purposefully now: carrying baskets, pushing trolleys, with their hands swinging idly or resting in each other’s palms.

Welcome to Cairns.

Australia

To get to Australia from where I live in Japan you go out of the guesthouse and turn right. At the end of the road you walk through the park towards Gyotoku station. Get the train to Nishi Funabashi station and then catch the Sobu line to Funabashi. Exit the train station and cross the bridge into the shopping mall on the other side. At the back of the mall is Keisei Funabashi station, where you can catch the Keisei limited express to Narita airport. Once at the airport ride the escalators up to floor 3 and then proceed to the appropriate check in desk - prebooking is essential.

At the appointed time head to the waiting area next to your gate and then board the plane. Now you can read a book, watch a film, talk to the person sitting next to you or optimistically attempt to sleep. About eight hours later you will find yourself either in Australia, an unscheduled other country or whichever version of the afterlife most appropriate to what you wrote in the Religion box on the last census. Once the seatbelt sign is extinguished and you have removed your belongings from the overhead locker, which may have moved during the flight, the real story begins.

It was hot in Cairns at 7:30AM on Monday the 24^th of March. It was hot even from the moment I stepped out of the plane and into one of those umbilical corridor things that takes you into the airport. Since my plane had just come from Japan it was full of Japanese people and I stood out somewhat in the immigration line for, “Foreign Passports.” When it was my turn I went up to the counter to show my passport, a freshly filled out immigration card and proof that I had purchased a visa to visit the country. The friendly looking man behind the counter eyed all this, and my face, with great suspicion. The conversation went something like this:

“What are you doing in Australia?”

“Just travelling.”

“Where are you going to go?”

“I am travelling from Cairns down to Sydney and then flying back Japan.”

“On your own?”

“With a friend…he’s already living in Cairns.”

“Have you bought a rail card?”

“Not yet no.”

He made some tactical gesture with his hand, smiled and let me through only to be immediately intercepted by another man. This new man spoke to me with an almost professionally relaxed manner, like we had just me at the party of a mutual friend. He asked me about Japan; where I live, what I do, whether teaching is hard, have I learnt much Japanese, is Japanese hard to understand. I couldn’t work out whether he wanted me to say something in Japanese, like what kind of proof was he looking for. He mentioned how hard kanji is to read and I agreed and tried to say something knowledgeable about it. The questions went on for another few minutes, changing from Japan to Australia, my plans and the friend I was travelling with. Just when I was about to say something else he said, “ok” and walked away. Bemused I made my way to the next stage.

Australia has very strict rules on what you can bring into the country. If you are carrying wooden souvenirs, dirty shoes or any kind of food you have to declare it. I was aware of this before I left Japan because I had been asked to take lots of instant food and so on for Yang, by his girlfriend. This was the part of going to Australia that I was most worried about, since the websites say things like, “If the instant food has more than 10% meat visible it must be destroyed,” and I can’t even understand the front of the packaging let alone the specific details on the back.

When it was my turn for customs inspection a man gestured me forward and I tried to be as helpful and compliant as I could be. “Hello,” I said, “I have some instant food I’d like to declare.” He nodded and led me to a desk where I unpacked all the various things I was carrying. He eyed the instant food packets, shook them a bit and said, “Ok.” Next I showed him a packet of chocolate nuts that I also had with me, “We’ll have to retain these I’m afraid” he said gravely. “Ok.” I said retaining my air of helpfulness. He laughed at me, “I’m joking.” I smiled and looked at his protruding gut, which I think was the real punch line to the joke. He let me through with all my food intact. The sliding doors opened into the brightly lit Arrivals Lobby where lots of people with signs looked at me disappointedly. Outside I could see a vast blue sky, mountains rising in the distance and palm trees doting the roads.

Welcome to Australia.

My job 2

Well the interview I went to on Thursday (see below) seemed to go ok. The company still will not know until the 14^th of April (four days after the interview) whether they have definitely got the contract for the school I was applying for anyway.

Today I visited my school just to tell them that I still want to work there, and have changed companies in order to do that. I was really surprised how many teachers the BOE decided to move to other schools, at least twenty members of the staff. The secretary was reeling off names of the teachers that have been posted elsewhere, it was quite sad to hear. I don’t understand the system but I suppose it makes sense to someone.
Apparently if I do get the job it will not start until May, so I have lots of time on my hands now.

My job

On Thursday of this week I am going to an interview for the job I was already doing. Does that sound strange? I think so too, allow me to explain.

In Japan you can’t just get a job in an elementary or high school as an English teacher. Each area belongs to a Board of Education (BOE) and these boards hire one of the many English teacher recruitment companies to find their teachers for them. Hopeful English teachers apply to one of these companies, and if they are successful then they get to work in a school.

In reality most of these companies don’t offer much support to the teachers, like training or materials for example. They do help with visas, show you where your school is and introduce you to the other teachers, but that is all. From my company, for example, I got a book of English teaching games, a CD and a three-hour talk about teaching. Then they sent me off to my school with a collection of time sheets to be rigorously filled in and stamped every day so that they could pay me only for each minute I was actually in school. There are no sick days, if I don’t go in I don’t get paid. There is no health insurance and definitely no pension. What’s more, because the BOE pays the companies, and the companies then pay the teachers, they are free to take about 40% of our earnings for themselves.

It must be great business, a real monopoly. Once a teacher is assigned to a school and doing their job, the company doesn’t have to do anything else for them, beyond processing tax and salary information.

This still does not explain why I am going for an interview though does it. Every year the BOE rethinks which company they want to hire. The different English teacher recruitment companies offer contracts for various amounts of money and the BOEs sit back and consider them. Sometimes a company may have let down the BOE by not providing enough teachers. This is what has happened to me, the BOE for the area where my school is has been let down by my company and so has chosen a different one. On Thursday my interview is with the new English teacher recruitment company for the area my school is in.

Even if the interview goes well they cannot guarantee that I will be sent to the same school I was working in previously. The fact that I know the school, the teachers and the kids does not seem to mean much. Nor does it matter that the school actually wants me to stay, as the BOE likes to move teachers around for some reason.

There are some mystical BOEs out there though which do employ English teachers directly. These contracts are very hard to come by as the teachers rarely leave such positions. The pay is much higher, they can leave early if they have nothing to do and there are even sick days. For the rest of us though we have to put up with getting thrown around by the decisions of the big bosses and the flow of money between governments and companies.

Just when I was fitting in and feeling part of the school I might get tossed aside for a cheaper model. I can but try though, and saying that I had better go dry-clean my suit.