Monday, December 21, 2009

Loose change for December 21, 2009

 Economic news 
 North Korea news and stuff 
 Other Korea-related stuff 


 Miscellany 

4 comments:

  1. Question. Will the Irish bitch as much as the typical American, Australian, Kiwi and Canadian?

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  2. In my personal experience, the Australians and the New Zealanders teaching English in Korea are almost universally a very non-complaining and adaptive group. Far more willing to get out and do stuff and all that.

    Then again, most of the American and Canadian English teachers I know are also pretty okay, too. In fact, people I know in person are far less complainy than the English teachers I know online (and even then, not all the NSETs I know online are unreasonably complainy or negative).

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  3. In that case all the expats that do unnecessary bitching/moaning/whining online are doing the overall expat community a big disservice... if it is true that the silent majority of expats in Korea generally have a decent time there.

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  4. Well, I can't exactly say that even the most adaptable are bitching-free. After all, there will always be headaches associated with work, moving to a new place, language barrier, etc. I guess one big difference is that there are fewer "Those Koreans" this "Those Koreans" that type of comments.

    But some parts of the online community do serve as a canary-in-the-coalmine role, providing a window into what's wrong. I would definitely take people like Brian in Chŏllanam-do and some of the other bloggers and put them a in a different category from Dave's ESL.

    But of course, one of the problems with the online community is that they end up creating a particularly negative narrative that ends up being far removed from what's going on in the real world.

    Even though, for example, I think the AES should be dealt with as a hate group, I think the online response has gone off the rails.

    Anyway, being an NSET can probably be a bit tough at times, and my hat's off (and my hand is out) to those who are trying to make it better (heck, in my line of work, I've been one of those people trying to make their lives better). But I do recognize that there are those who are just whining and there are those who are actually making things more difficult for themselves and others.

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