AUNTIE RED'S CLUB

[00:00:06]Good morning everybody. I'm here again.

[00:00:10]The the Nast rice fields getting a bit greener, but it's very patchy.

[00:00:19]Oh, the rest of it is looking glorious.

[00:00:25]Green as you'd like.

[00:00:29]Uh, I think it's a Wednesday. I'm not sure.

[00:00:33]It might be a Thursday.

[00:00:38]Um, got some great positive comments about the Thai teaching.

[00:00:45]I was a bit concerned about that. I mean, I know it's not for everybody, but lots of people commented and said, "Yeah, you know, that really helps."

[00:00:54]So I think what I'll do is every week I'll broach a different aspect you know for example like I think next week I'm going to do all about the body healths going to the doctor you know diseases illnesses and stuff like that because I think that would be useful.

[00:01:23]I know some doctors speak pretty good English, but some do not and certainly people at the clinic might not. So that might, you know, be offer practical help.

[00:01:35]And then maybe the next week after that I'll do something all about the weather, you know, different vocab for the weather.

[00:01:44]And then I'll do something about emotions.

[00:01:48]So yeah, I I'll I'll try and package it so that each week it's about one particular aspect.

[00:02:02]So today I want to tell you about a rather interesting time in my life.

[00:02:10]Uh I was working at some school. Where was I working?

[00:02:16]might have been Patum Tani, a little primary school.

[00:02:22]And I knew this woman who worked at UNICEF.

[00:02:28]I used to help her plan teacher training workshops and sometimes she'd have me translating.

[00:02:38]Nice lady.

[00:02:41]Anyway, she got in touch with me one day and she said, "Look, there's a school in Minbury by the name of Mimasatwitia and the principal of that school is a very forwardthinking lady. Got lots of great ideas about education and she's looking for a special kind of foreign teacher. you know, she's looking for a foreign teacher that speaks Thai and who has a good understanding of, you know, active learning, child centered learning, which I had, you know. So, she said, "Look, I'm I'm going to recommend you."

[00:03:19]So I went for the interview, got the job at good salary, much better than I was getting before and I knew straight away this was going to be a longterm thing. I was going to be there for a long time and it was different. It wasn't a regular teaching job. It was a big school, 100 teachers, 4,000 students.

[00:03:48]um from kindergarten right up to grade 12 and it was run by a Chinese foundation.

[00:03:57]So they had loads of money. This woman, this principal, Kun Mantica, her name was lovely woman.

[00:04:07]She had very strong ideas about the Thai education system. She knew how it lacked.

[00:04:13]She knew that the kids had no critical thinking skills and she wanted to change that.

[00:04:22]So anyway, I I I went to work there and obviously it's a long way from Patani. So we found a house in a Muban called Bua which was on the Ram Kamhen road and it was only about 3 kilometers from the school. big Muban it was. So we rented a house there in a little soy.

[00:04:48]Tom and Jerry would have been around about 5 and 4.

[00:04:56]And so me and my wife would would ride our bicycles every morning to school.

[00:05:02]We'd take the kids with us, you know, and then my wife would come back in the afternoon and we'd ride the bike home. Ride the bikes home.

[00:05:12]And I was very happy there, you know, and we'd only been there about a couple of weeks, I suppose. And I one one evening, one early evening, I decided to go and do a bit of exploring. So I came out of the little Soy where I where I lived, Soy 12 it was.

[00:05:33]And right on the corner of Soy 10, which is probably couple of hundred meters from my house, there was a convenience store, a little old lady store, you know. And I'm walking past there and I see this bunch of old Thai guys sitting out the front and I didn't really pay them any attention, you And I'm walking past the shop and I suddenly hear this voice in perfect English and he said, "There goes a man with purpose.

[00:06:07]There goes a man who knows where he's going." And I just stopped dead, you know. And I turned around and I looked at these guys and they were old guys.

[00:06:19]And I just walked over there and I said, "Well, funny you should say that because I I really don't know where I'm going at all. I've just moved here." And oh, these guys, they all spoke perfect English. They were all retired. Oh, sit down.

[00:06:38]Have a beer. Where do you live now? And I told them the story. Oh, wow. That's great.

[00:06:45]You can become a member of Auntie Red's club.

[00:06:50]So I sat and ordered a beer and the the old lady of the shop, her name was Deng Badang, Auntie Red, she brought me out a glass, you know, and they had ice and so I started to drink my beer with these guys. And there were five of them, all retired.

[00:07:09]Two of them were exjournalists.

[00:07:13]One was a lawyer, another one was a retired business owner, Horage, and I can't remember what the other guy did, but they were all retired. And they all spoke excellent English. And they loved the idea of me coming down there because they had someone to practice their English with cuz they didn't speak English when they're on their own. You know, ties don't do that. No matter how well they speak English, if they're talking amongst themselves, they won't speak English. So over a period of years, and it was years, I used to go there three times a week.

[00:08:01]Tuesday night, Friday night, and Saturday night, we would congregate there at 6:00 and we'd stay there till like 8 or 9 drinking beer.

[00:08:17]And uh it was a real eye opener for me because I'd never really met any elderly educated ties that spoke really good English. They were all they were all educated either in the UK or the US.

[00:08:39]And so it was Auntie Red's club and it was quite formal.

[00:08:44]the chairman, the oldest person in the club was the chairman and he was one of the journalists and there was a white plastic garden chair and the and and and the the others were like stalls.

[00:09:00]So the the chairman of the club always sat in this white chair at the end of the table, you know, and uh the the the guy who was the chairman when I arrived, he was a strange guy. He was 76.

[00:09:19]And the first time I saw him, he was wearing a pair of shorts and a cut off denim jacket with no sleeves.

[00:09:29]He had a few tattoos, gray hair, long gray hair with a ponytail, and he just looked so out of place, but he was so funny.

[00:09:42]They all were.

[00:09:44]So, I really enjoyed my time with these guys, you know, and every time we met, they'd ask me to tell them a story about my traveling.

[00:09:58]and I'd ask them something, you know, about Thai culture or what they did and it was great. And of course, Auntie Red looked after us. She'd always bring out the ice and and the bill would come at the end of the night and we just split the bill, you know, and uh only been about 3 months and the chairman died.

[00:10:26]He woke up one morning, sat at his writing desk, wrote out on a piece of paper, I don't feel very good. Somehow I think this is going to be the last day for me on this planet. And he dropped dead.

[00:10:41]So we all went to his funeral, which was at a temple nearby.

[00:10:48]you know, we all paid our respects and then we had a we came to Auntie Red's after the funeral and then the lawyer said, "Wow, you know, now that we've lost our chairman, we need a new chairman."

[00:11:05]And the new chairman was the It was the lawyer.

[00:11:14]That's right. It was the lawyer. He was the next oldest. He didn't want to be the chairman, but we said, "No, no, you have to." So, the lawyer took over the the white chair role.

[00:11:29]And they had rules. It was quite strange. You couldn't drink any beer until the chairman arrived.

[00:11:39]And of course he was always punctual, you know, and he'd sit down and she'd bring out, you know, Auntie Red would bring his beer out and then we'd all order a beer and he'd sit there and he'd pour his beer and he'd take his first sip of beer and then he'd nod and then everybody could start drinking and they were all smokers so he had ashtrays on the table and it was all very nice.

[00:12:08]Couple of more months go by and we get there one night and uh no chairman, no lawyer.

[00:12:23]Half an hour go by and we're just all sitting there, you know.

[00:12:27]Suddenly some woman comes along, goes into the shop, buys something, comes out, and the auntie Red comes out and says, "Oh, can't remember his name now." The lawyer, the lawyer's passed, he died this afternoon.

[00:12:47]So, we lost another chairman.

[00:12:51]Now, by this time, nobody wanted to take the chairman's position because it seemed like a bad omen. Now, there was only four of us, three of them and me.

[00:13:07]and you know uming and aaring and uming and I just said look even though I'm the youngest cuz I was I'll take the chairman's role if nobody else will cuz I don't believe in this superstition stuff. So they made me chairman.

[00:13:36]There were some funny things that happened.

[00:13:40]I remember one time I said to the lawyer, you know, I said, "Uh, what did you do then? Tell me, tell us about your work."

[00:13:49]He said, "I worked for this big holage firm."

[00:13:54]Said, "Oh, yeah." I said, "Well, so what did you do on a typical day?" He said, "Not much." She said, "Every months I would have to go and visit about 15 police precincts and give them each an envelope."

[00:14:10]And in return for the envelope, they would give me a bunch of stickers.

[00:14:17]And I'm like, "What's that all about?"

[00:14:18]Then he said, "Well, in the envelope was money and the stickers were to put on the truck on our truck windcreens because if you didn't have a sticker on your windscreen, the cops would hassle the driver. They'd want to weigh the truck. They'd want to check the exhaust to see if there was pollution.

[00:14:45]And generally they'd give the driver a hard time and they'd try to find some way to book him. And so it was just a large scale corruption thing. He said, "Yeah, that was my main job. I'd have to go at the end of every month to all the precincts in the areas where we worked and pay the money and get the stickers."

[00:15:07]And the stickers changed color every month. So you couldn't get away with not not paying and then leaving the old sticker there because they they they'd know that that no that's last month. So it was all very organized and he said you know if we didn't pay they would cause us so much hassle so we had to pay.

[00:15:34]And I learned a lot from these guys about this. You know, they said to me, well, you know, most businesses sooner or later they have to do a deal with the cops, you know, and it's a bit of a shakeddown. You know, you might get a cop come to your restaurant, say, and you know, he they might sit there and have a couple of drinks and then they'd say to you, you know, we we can we can look after you. we can make sure that you know everything's cool for you.

[00:16:07]And the the owner of the restaurant might say, "What do you mean?" They'd say, "Well, you know, if you're shutting if you're open late, you know, past the licensing hours and you're playing loud music and that and somebody phones in and complains, well, we won't come, you know, and if you've got underage drinkers here, we just won't bother you."

[00:16:32]So you'd kind of get the message and you'd be like, "Oh, okay." So then they you'd come to an agreement and every month one or two of them would arrive and you just give them this envelope and of course you're you're under their umbrella then. But of course if you say no then they just hassle you. It's a bit like the mafia, you know, protection.

[00:16:56]We'll protect your business. Oh, I don't need any protection. Well, you will if you don't pay.

[00:17:05]So, yeah, that's what it was like.

[00:17:08]I mean, I don't know it would be like that now, but it certainly was then.

[00:17:20]Now, one of these guys, he was a bit tight and uh he came one day Because in the winter we'd often drink whiskey with our beer because it's cold, you know. And we would always be there on New Year's Eve. We we'd each bring bowls of food, you know, like masaman and French bread and all kinds of things.

[00:17:48]And we'd be there all night till the morning. And Auntie Red would stay open for us.

[00:17:55]So we all looked forward to Christmas and New Year. And this one particular day, this one of the guys, cuz most of them arrived on their push bikes, you know, he he arrived and he had this this bottle of liquor in a plastic bag and he's got it out and he's put it on the table and it's Johnny. It's Johnny Walker blue label, which I think is probably the most expensive one. It's better than black.

[00:18:23]You know, you got red, black, and then I think you've got blue. So anyway, he puts this on the table and one of the other guys said, "Oh, great. We'll have a good night tonight." Oh, no. He said, "I couldn't let anybody have any of that. That's just for me." And he wouldn't he wouldn't share it.

[00:18:42]And you know, the other tie guys and they didn't like this and they're just, you know, they're giving him a bit of a hard time about it. But he wouldn't change his mind. So when it came time to leave about 9:00, he stood up and there's about half the bottle left and he puts it in the plastic bag and he walks over to his bike and he said, "I'm sorry guys, but this alcohol is just so special that I wasn't prepared to share it." And as he said that, the bag slipped out of his hand and the bottle smashed on the pavement. Oh boy, did everybody laugh.

[00:19:31]Somna, they said, "Serves you right."

[00:19:35]And he was gutted.

[00:19:38]You know, he lost this half a bottle of Blue Label.

[00:19:42]And we used to take the Mickey out of him every time he arrived after that.

[00:19:45]when he parked his bike up, we'd say, "Have you smelled the sidewalk over there? It smells really nice, you know."

[00:19:51]Oh, he didn't like it. But he was he was a bit tight, that guy.

[00:19:58]Yeah. And then another one died.

[00:20:04]Four of them died while I lived there over a period of about seven years.

[00:20:11]But they were old, you see. So the club kind of just fizzled out in the end, but it was great fun.

[00:20:21]Yeah, we used to laugh so much. They love telling jokes, too. It was very unusual to meet a bunch of guys like this. They were really what I would call eccentrics.

[00:20:38]They told me stories about politics and stuff like that cuz I mean they were all when they were working they were all pretty high up guys, you know. One of them was a reporter for the nation.

[00:20:52]The other one was a reporter for the Bangkok Post and I think he was like the chief guy. I think he was the editor for a few years before he retired.

[00:21:03]Yeah, it was a very interesting period of my life.

[00:21:08]And working at that school was really good, too.

[00:21:14]The only reason I left it is because the principal got pushed out.

[00:21:20]And they brought this new guy in there and he didn't like me at all. And he fired me on the spot.

[00:21:27]Yeah. After eight years, he fired me.

[00:21:31]don't need any foreigners here.

[00:21:34]So I went to the Gro Rangan, the Department of Labor and uh I told them all about it and they said, "Well, have you had your salary for this month yet?" I said, "No, it's due in about 3 days." So they said, "Well, don't do we won't do anything till then."

[00:21:55][laughter] So of course, I I went to the school to collect my salary and was told, "Nope.

[00:22:01]This new guy said, "No, I'm not paying you." Because it was summer holidays and I I got paid 12 months a year, you know.

[00:22:07]So, I went back to them and told them and they sent somebody to the school and the the the new guy just told them straight out and said, "Look, I I don't want him here anymore. I don't have any need for a foreign teacher. We're focusing on Chinese now, not English, and I don't have a use for him."

[00:22:27]And they said, "Well, you can't just fire a guy who's been working here eight years." Whoop. I have.

[00:22:35]So, they took they took up my case.

[00:22:39]And I think I went to the the the court, the labor court 10 times over the period of a year.

[00:22:50]And they every time I went, the the the the Department of Labor had a lawyer there for me. I never paid them a scent, nothing.

[00:23:00]And the judgment came through and I got awarded 10 month salary because I got fired unfairly. They couldn't come up with anything I'd done wrong. They had no defense. He just didn't want me there. And of course, it wasn't his money. It was the school's money. So he didn't care. This guy, he was a nasty piece of work. Threatened my wife once at the school when she went there to get documents for my kids because we had to change schools for when I found out I went there and the security wouldn't let me in. And I I I saw him and I said, "Hey, you." I said, "I don't care who you are. You know, you think you're some mafia guy." I said, "You threaten my wife." I says, "I'll come in there and take your head off your shoulders." And he looked at me. He says, "You don't know who I am, do I?" I said, "I don't give a who you are."

[00:23:57]I said, "I'm I'm crazy me. I'll have you." And he he was afraid of me. This guy wouldn't come to court anymore after that cuz he knew I'd be there. Anyway, I won and he appealed and I thought, "Oh my god, this is going to go on forever."

[00:24:17]And the judge was a really nice guy. And the judge after the after they appealed, the judge called me into his office and he said to me, he says, "You know, I don't like this guy." He said, "He's he's a nasty piece of work and he's known around here to be a a corrupt businessman and all that." And he said, "You know what I'm going to do?" He said, "They've appealed he's appealed the decision." He said, "But in order to to appeal the decision, they have to deposit the money that they would have to pay you to the court. That's the law.

[00:24:56]That's the rules." So, he's deposited a check today for the money that that that we've awarded you. And you know what I'm going to do? He said, "I'm going to throw out their claim for appeal because they're not providing any extra information."

[00:25:15]So, he wrote me a check there and then.

[00:25:19]I think it was 385,000 Bart plus interest. I think I got something like 460,000 B. He gave me the check right there and then. and he says, "You don't have to wait any longer because I'm throwing out their appeal on Monday morning and after that we just call you in and pay you. So, I'm going to give you the check now." He says, "Don't put it into the bank till Monday." And I was blown away. I'm like, "Wow, this is great."

[00:25:50]and the people who'd helped me at the Department of Labor, the the one guy who was on my case, really nice guy, you know, I put 15,000 Bart in an envelope and I gave it to him outside his offices and he looked at me, he said, "What's that?" I said, "It's something for you and your guys. You know, I'm really impressed with the way you've helped me.

[00:26:11]You know, you've been there every time.

[00:26:13]You you've helped me out. You presented all the evidence and you just you just won the case." And he gave me back the envelope. He said, "No, no, no, no. I can't take that." I said, "But nobody will know. Share it amongst the other people." No, no, no, no. And he gave it me back. I couldn't believe it.

[00:26:34]So anyway, I um I got awarded that and we we I put down a deposit on a new truck which I had for eight years until I wrote it off.

[00:26:51]I uh I won't go into that. Lucky to survive that one. I I was for sure. But that was a very interesting time in my life. I enjoyed working at that school.

[00:27:02]That's where I picked up all my Thai really. That's where my Thai became really good because I was always translating all the time and I worked with a 100 Thai teachers who didn't speak any English. We went abroad a few times for training. We went to Australia. We went to New Zealand.

[00:27:21]And I went, you know, badang, Auntie Red. I'm sure Auntie Red is no longer with us anymore cuz that was 20 odd 30 years ago. I think it was 1999 when I moved there.

[00:27:45]So 27 years ago. And Auntie Red would have been in her 70s. So, Auntie Red's probably not with us anymore. And I know for a fact that none of the guys are still alive. They've all passed on.

[00:28:00]Just me.

[00:28:05]But it was an interesting time. And I did get to learn about the the upper class Thai society because these guys knew everything, you know, and I'd ask them about it, you know, how does it work and Chinese ties and all that. And they'd say, "Oh, you can't marry out of the the family decide who you marry and all this." Yeah, they really enlightened me about an aspect of Thai society that I really didn't know nothing about. And they were so funny.

[00:28:36]These guys, we'd laugh all the time.

[00:28:39]We'd just laugh.

[00:28:43]Yeah. I look back on that with some fondness. And boy, could they drink beer, you know, we'd all drink beer chain.

[00:28:52]You you you know, and I maybe I'd put away four or five bottles, big bottles in a in a session, and and they would too.

[00:29:01]But it was great fun. They were they were really nice guys.

[00:29:06]And uh we had great times.

[00:29:12]Yeah.

[00:29:15]And reds.

[00:29:21]A few funny things about that court case, that unfair dismissal court case.

[00:29:28]I mean, I had to go to court quite a few times, you know, and uh and I'd have a lawyer on my side and and and that that nasty man was there and they'd have a lawyer, the school, you know, and all of a sudden that their their lawyer stands up and says to the judge, "This foreigner didn't have a work permit."

[00:29:52]And the judge looks at me and said, "Is that true?"

[00:29:56]So I said, "Well, I did have a work permit for the first seven years I was there, but then they wouldn't renew it anymore."

[00:30:08]So the the judge looked at their lawyer and said, "Is this true?"

[00:30:14]And he's whispering away to this this guy who's taken over now. And he comes back. He says, "Um, uh, yes, I think so."

[00:30:24]And so the judge just says to him, "Well, if he's working without a work permit, that's illegal and that's down to you, not down to him. So, do you wish to proceed along these lines?" And the lawyer says, "No, your honor."

[00:30:44]And so, uh, that they shut them up. And then and then at one time cuz when I left I had to leave quickly. They fired me, you know, and and and there was a lot of stuff in my desk that I didn't take.

[00:30:59]And of course when I'd gone they'd gone through my desk and they'd found a letter that I'd written to the principal who was a woman you know her name was Manta Rica a woman of very high standing in the community from a wealthy family and I'd written a letter to her but I'd never given it to her and it said dear Manta you know as you would write in a letter. Well, none of these people spoke any English at all. And so they translated dear Manta as being Tilac Manta, you know, which is the Thai for like darling.

[00:31:41]So he got it in his head that me and her were having an affair. [laughter] His lawyer stood up with this letter and he said, "Your honor, we've discovered that this foreigner here was having inappropriate behavior with the former principle."

[00:32:02]And the judge looks over and says, "Well, what what makes you think that?"

[00:32:06]And he said, "Well, we've discovered this letter."

[00:32:10]And in this letter, he calls a tilac.

[00:32:14]Let me have a look at that letter.

[00:32:17]The Clark court takes the letter and gives it to the judge and he looks at he said absolute rubbish. He said, "That's the way you write a letter in English to anybody, dear so and so." He said, "It doesn't mean anything at all." And then he read the rest of the letter. He said, "All he's discussing in this letter is school matters.

[00:32:41]What an absolute load of rubbish." And then he looks at me. He said, "Are you having an affair with that woman?" I said, "No."

[00:32:49]And he just shook his head, you know.

[00:32:52]So, I think it was after the third court hearing, the the lawyer with me says, "You're going to win this case." He says, "There's no way you're not going to win this case because they even admit you never did anything wrong."

[00:33:12]They even admit that they fired you without any cause whatsoever.

[00:33:19]And according to the law, you'd been there eight years. They owe you 10 month salary. He said, "So you can bank on that." He said, "They kept a journing, you know, they kept trying all these different things."

[00:33:34]And the judge, I mean, he he just he didn't like them at all. And I think he did like me.

[00:33:43]And one time that they tried to adjourn it and he wouldn't have it. He said, "Nope, if they're not here, we're going ahead."

[00:33:52]And and that particular time, that pretty much did it. The judge says right at the end, he says, "Look, I I don't want to keep bringing you people here time after time after time. This is a clearcut case."

[00:34:06]He said, "We'll convene again next Monday morning at 10:00 and I'm going to give my judgment on this case. I'm not waiting around any longer."

[00:34:17]And and and the following Monday morning, the the the the nasty guy didn't show up, but his lawyer did. And the judge just stood up and said, "Well, I'm awarding this foreigner 10 month salary for unfair dismissal.

[00:34:34]have you got anything to say? And their lawyer just went, "No, your honor. Well, you got 30 days to appeal and that's it." And he banged his gavvel thing on the thing and that was done. And my lawyer says, "You've won. You've won."

[00:34:48]And I'm like, "Great." And they said, "Yeah, but if they appeal, it might be another year before you get paid." And I'm like, "Oh my god." And he said, "But don't worry about it. You're getting 7% interest." And it had already been a year since I'd been fired. So I was already getting 7% interest on, you know, 400,000 bar.

[00:35:11]And then the judge did what he did. He called me into his chambers and he gave he wrote me a check.

[00:35:17]He said, "I've I've I'm fed up with this." He said he said, "They should never have brought this to court." Well, they didn't. I did. He said, "But they should have paid you straight away." He said, "But I'm disgusted with the way they've acted over this." And he just gave me the check. He said, "I'm going to give you this check right now." He said, "Just don't put it in the bank till after Monday." He said, "And and they're going to hand hand over a check to us because they have to if they want to appeal.

[00:35:46]So once they've paid us, that's it. You know, I'll I'll refuse. I'll reject their appeal and you can cash your check." And that's what happened. I walked out of there with a check. Yeah.

[00:36:03]And my wife, when that started, my wife knew how influential this guy was and she knew I'd gone to the school and threatened him. And she was terrified.

[00:36:15]She begged me to drop it, not to try and claim any money. And I said, "But I'm in the right." She said, "I know you are, but I know about this guy. You'll be riding your bicycle somewhere in the evening and you'll get run over by a pickup truck. It'll be a hit and run. I know what these people are like," she said. And you know, my wife was the kind of person who she wouldn't stick up for herself.

[00:36:46]And I'm like, "Nope, I'm going all the way with this." I mean, I disliked this guy intensely.

[00:36:54]And when I got the check and I went home and she says to me, "What happened today?" And I showed her the check and she went, "Oh my god." I said, "You see, see what happens when you stand up for yourself, you know, when you're in the right." So she was very very happy that I'd I'd done that. She said, "Oh, I realize now." She said, "But it was dangerous."

[00:37:18]She said, you know, and and funnily enough, this guy who took over got fired six months after I got paid off. The school fired him because he took all the all the money from the school to a casino in Cambodia and lost the lot.

[00:37:41]It was a disaster.

[00:37:48]So yeah, I won a I won a an unfair dismissal case even though I didn't have a work permit.

[00:37:56]You know, the judge threw that out straight away. He said, "Well, he used to have one and you stopped issuing it.

[00:38:03]Why?"

[00:38:05]Oh, or this or that. You know, and he said, "No, no, that's not that's not down to him. That's down to you." you know, you could be charged and fined for that.

[00:38:18]So, I never got in any trouble even working illegally.

[00:38:27]And I've heard other cases similar to mine whereby a foreign teacher got unfairly treated at a school and they went to the Department of Labor and they took up the case and they took it to court and they got the right result and the foreigner never had to pay a penny.

[00:38:49]So I was very impressed with that, the way that that department helped me out and dealt with that.

[00:38:57]H yeah, you know, I would have stayed at that school if they hadn't got rid of the female principal because it was a great school and she'd made so many changes and so much progress in the eight years that I'd been there.

[00:39:21]And when the kids left that school in grade 12 and went on to university, she tracked them and because they'd had like eight years of of critical thinking skill development and all that, these kids all did well.

[00:39:40]They all did really well because the education system was different and all the Thai teachers had been trained about how to do it. You know, she invested a lot of money in in training up her teachers and changing the education system. So much so that after about 5 years, the Ministry of Education would send schools, teachers to her school to see what we were doing because it was working.

[00:40:15]You know, the kids had imagination, they had creativity, they had critical thinking skills, and it worked. It really did.

[00:40:29]>> Yeah.

[00:40:32]I do look back on my years at that school with some fondness.

[00:40:38]>> Yeah, I think it was eight years I was there. Seven or eight years.

[00:40:45]Great school, great people.

[00:40:50]And I got on very well with everyone in the school. They were all nice, mainly female teachers. I think there was about 10 male teachers and they were mainly sports teachers and computer teachers but mainly they were female teachers but they were all very very nice people and it was a great working environment and I enjoyed my job there. I mean I really did. I'd teach something like 15 hours a week. That would be all. And the rest of the time I'd be helping the principal. She'd go off to different schools and do all these presentations and I'd do all her powerpoints for her and I'd be translating a lot of the time. So my job wasn't really teaching so much. And then she got three or four other foreign teachers in there, you know, to teach them the high school section. And I was in I was the the head teacher of the foreigners.

[00:41:53]And you know, so I was like, well, I wasn't their boss, but I just looked after them. I made sure they had all the good teaching resources and stuff like that. So, I had a good job there. I really did.

[00:42:08]And uh it was great.

[00:42:14]Badang. Auntie Red's Club.

[00:42:19]Yeah, that was fun.

[00:42:25]So, I guess that's it really today, guys. I uh I'm I'm getting ready with my collaboration with this new friend of mine.

[00:42:41]And uh that we should be recording that at the weekend.

[00:42:47]And if we do that, then it'll be out probably by Monday or Tuesday.

[00:42:53]I got to edit it and stuff, you know.

[00:42:55]And then I'm going to do an interview with somebody in the week. And then we'll do a regular weekend podcast, you know, me and this new friend of mine.

[00:43:06]And then we got Tai teaching on Tuesdays.

[00:43:11]So, I'm taking a different direction with the channel. And I hope it it might maybe even extend my reach and maybe I'll get some more subs.

[00:43:30]And uh I I do take note of what people say regarding the Thai teaching. And so I'll I'll I'll I'll address the the requests every time and add that to the next one. So, you know, one guy actually said that he's really a beginner, you know, absolute beginner.

[00:43:52]And so, I'll do with the numbers and the pronouns and all that for a beginner.

[00:44:00]Yeah. So, wherever you are, have a great day and uh it's Triple T signing off.