I am a potter, photographer and linguist. I speak Japanese, Mandarin, French, English as well as other dialects in each. I am interested in the language of minority speakers including Inuit, the Zhuang, the Okinawan dialect, Quebecois and many others. I like it when I hear people speak one language at home, another language in the street and a common language in the train stations, this gives people their vibrant culture and strong sense of identity.
This is the official blog of the Iroha Project. Please don’t forget to subscribe to my mailing list on the left. As much as I love what I do here I also like to eat so any small donation of 25 cents would be more than appreciated.
The lunar new year is coming up so I decided to put this simple php script up, which I found interesting. It is by from the FlexPHPSite and well requires a little bit of PHP programming knowledge to get it up and running. The program tells you your Chinese zodiac sign after entering your birthday. You can give it a try here.
From my experience working in Asia as a English language teacher I am quite confident to say that Image precedes Qualifications in most cases.
It is a very sad fact but it is the case everywhere in every country but more prevalent in Asia. The difference may be very slight but still I believe it is there. School administration will never admit it but it is implied through actions. There will never be strong words like “fired”, “white”, “race”, or any other words that may imply “hatred” just a slight brushing away of the subject matter anything to avoid the subject will often be done. The truth may or may never come out boiling away hidden underneath people’s skins.
At one school I was never told that I was fired, at the end of one month they just handed me my pay and complemented me on being such a great teacher but the parents on the other hand had a “grudge”, or something “against” me. Obviously they were trying to brush it off of themselves and put the accountability on “someone” else, which is often the case in these situations.
Later the truth came out in what apparently was meant to be a joke (definitely not in my view), “Why don’t you color your hair?”!
Who takes the accountability? No one really in my view. The accountability is always brushed under the table and onto “someone” else’s side of the table.
