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An American in Asia

I'm an English teacher. Now, before you get too far in visualizing me as a be-spectacled pipe-smoker in tired tweed, wistfully quoting Donne and Milton, I am not that kind of English teacher. I don't teach Eng. Lit. I teach children English as a Foreign Language in Taipei, Taiwan where I have lived for more than 12 years.

As an "ex-pat", it's interesting being outside of the mainstream of American Consciousness in a "life laboratory", anthropologic kind of way. I'm rarely swept up in the current 'mania'. Mainly because I might not even hear about it until years after the fact. I didn't see a 'Seinfeld' episode until it was in its last season. 'Ali McBeal', I've seen once or twice and 'The Sopranos' about the same number of times.

I'm not implying that I have some inner strength or wisdom which allows me to 'center' myself in the maelstrom of modern life and by so doing resist the temptation to sample the inane. I'm just not being presented a 24-hour, serve-yourself buffet banquet of psycho-babble baloney, fulsome flummery, moony romance and schmaltzy twaddle.

At least, not in English. The locals, I'm sure, are dishing it out. But my command of Mandarin Chinese is, to put a glow on it, utilitarian at best. My limited vocabulary, I'm able to deliver with a nearly-native accent. Or so I'm told. But there's no way I could decipher the messages delivered in the mad, high-pitched gibber which serves as the standard sound-track of Taiwan media programming.

It's not like I'm living in yurt in Ulaanbaatur, either. This is the era of cable TV and the Internet. I get lots of input. Much of it comes from knowledgeable non-American friends and international news sources. I have no claim to a better perspective of things. I just have a different vantage point.

However, I am not a cultural orphan in self-exile who has adopted Oriental manners and dress. I have maintained my American sensibilities. I was born in America and raised by honest, hard-working Americans - Brokaw's 'Greatest Generation'. I had a paper route and learned the value of a job well done. I mowed lawns and washed cars to buy my first bicycle. I played high school football, American gridiron. (I was awful.) I am a Chicago Bears fan, the McCaskey family aside. I once met Walter 'Sweetness' Payton, shook his hand and congratulated him on his combined yardage record. One of my 'brushes with greatness'.

I haven't always been a language teacher. For most of my post-adolescence I was a musician. I learned first-hand why the hackneyed term 'struggling musician' has never lost favor. For the better part of 20 years, I struggled to balance my desire to make music with the necessity of making money, money, money. After years of working temp jobs in what my friends termed 'professional poverty', I gave up on my dream of being a hybrid of John Lennon and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. (sigh.) I took a full-time job.

I spent a couple of years in retail, grappling up the ladder from stock clerk to store manager before following something much-less-than-my-bliss into corporate sales. In suit, tie and a faux-London Fog, briefcase in hand, standing on a frigid platform, waiting for a Chicago commuter train, I realized that I sorely lacked the motivation to continue that career track.

It's not that I have an exact idea of what that motivation might be. (A family dependent upon my income? An immense debt load with Paulie the Shiv?) I simply knew that I didn't have much reason, other than a regular pay-check, of course, to jump through daily hoops and feign enthusiasm for unremarkable products and superfluous services.

I had been house-sitting for friends of mine while they were on a busman's holiday in Taiwan. When they returned, I saw that a new career path lay before me. With a little training, I could teach English as a foreign language in Taiwan. Hey, why not? But first, I had to go with my sister to tour Africa and visit friends she'd made in the South African Consulate. (It was a fantastic trip. I'll tell you about it sometime.)

When I got back from the Southern Hemisphere, I gave notice, packed my things, turned my sister's basement into a de-facto storage locker and came to Taiwan on an 18 month contract to teach in a small, private language school. Time sure flies. Since then, I have actually learned something about teaching, language, linguistics and life. (If, for the sake of alliteration, I might be so bold.)

Actually, that statement is not really as self-serving as it might appear. The minimum requirement for reaching two-score-and-ten is learning something about keeping one's keister out of a sling. So, in effect, I'm only claiming the obvious: that I've met that minimum. My efforts to perpetuate personal respiration have been successful for more than 52 years. No small feat, however dubious, and one which on several occasions, seemed entirely less than likely to succeed. I gotta admit that I have seen some things and could tell some tales. Which is precisely what I intend to do here in this anthology. If you should not agree with my views or dislike my manner of discourse, I can only say that I have the deepest most heartfelt pity for you. No. Not really.

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