I am having a tremendously horrendous time at work today. Don’t even have the energy to explain it all.
Wish I can just pinch one and be rid of this shit. :aiyo:
Tell us about it. You’ll feel better.
[quote=“e30rusty”]I am having a tremendously horrendous time at work today. Don’t even have the energy to explain it all.
Wish I can just pinch one and be rid of this shit. :aiyo:[/quote]
I had a similar day on Tuesday. I feel your pain, mate. Hang in there, it’s almost weekend. 
Yep, my Tuesday was awful! Just hang in. If you can keep it up long enough, eventually it won’t matter any more. Life goes on. It won’t always be the way it is now.
Thanks for the positive words. I will try my best not to lose it. Though I have been wearing a shit face since I got out of bed this morning. :bluemad:
Hang in there, pal. Let it out.
When I feel really bad at work, I look at my beloved kids pictures. Helps knowing all I do and all I have to take has a higher purpose. I have six mouths to feed, I have six mouths to feed… Their happiness and well-being is worth the sacrifices.
You have that many kids? Yikes! Where are you from, the Democratic Republic of the Congo?
Hey, if it wasn’t for us furriners, where would the fertility rate in Taiwan be?!
ps.
4 cats, 2 dogs. those are my kids. Back home our fetility rate is less than 2…
You have a job.
Go back to your country right now and see if you can even get a job. Let alone one that pays what you are making for doing an easy task job (not telling you to go back, you get what I mean).
If you are teaching in Taiwan, you have an easy life. Simple as that.
Though I do relate to the “thousand paper cuts” that go along with teaching. But hey, I have a job.
This is what I like about your posts, Savon, they’re always positive.
On the other hand, everyone has a bad day at the office now and then and it’s fair enough that they let off a bit of steam.
My stupid assistant comes around 9:15am and leaves no later than 6:15pm almost every day, writes Greek English I can’t understand, plurks online, gets 28,000/mo, and still complains about the job. Sigh… Anyway I’m driving her away.
Hmmm… maybe I should consider looking for an assistant here lol~
[quote=“tomthorne”]This is what I like about your posts, Savon, they’re always positive.
On the other hand, everyone has a bad day at the office now and then and it’s fair enough that they let off a bit of steam.[/quote]
Thanks for the compliment, though not entirely true. 
Everyone needs to let off steam, sure. However, when complaints is all I ever hear all the time, I mean all the time, from us foreigners, it really brings me down. It reminds me of spoiled children throwing fits.
I cannot have a conversation with a foreigner without them complaining. This is why I am sensitive to complaints now days.
For example: I just met this guy at a school I was subbing for to help a friend out. I was walking to my scooter. He happened to be going the same direction and started talking to me for the first time. First words to me were, “Fucking kids, fucking driving me crazy.” He was so angry he was shaking. Whatever happened to a simple “hello” and a little eye roll when having a bad day when meeting someone new? I later found out, he is always like this and the ESL teachers don’t hate him, they get entertainment from it and say all foreigner complain. Which is another subject that I wont get into right now.
I know some of you will come at me and say, “this is rare, he probably had a bad day or these things happen”. Truth of the matter is, this is a common occurrence. Eating at restaurants and a group of foreigners sitting in a booth, you are guaranteed to hear complaining about Taiwan. Grocery stores, I see foreigners very frustrated and some mumble "cant find ". I could go on, but you get what I am saying.
Once, just once I would like to sit down, have a beer or 3 with a foreigner and not hear one complaint. I can talk about many topics. I am well read, like all kinds of music, am a computer guru, photographer, father, husband, cook, gardener, political activist, woodlands survivor, rock climber, I exercise and online pirate to name a few. And that’s not even talking about what you are about!
See how many things we can talk about instead of how you (I use you loosely) can single handily change Taiwan’s ways? Don’t some of you realize that when you complain you bring others down?
I think people forget Taiwan is changing for the better faster than any country any of us came from.
This is just my take on the subject. I know I am not going to change anything. I just want to have a conversation every once in awhile. Maybe even laugh at a joke someone tells me.
[quote=“golf”]My stupid assistant comes around 9:15am and leaves no later than 6:15pm almost every day, writes Greek English I can’t understand, plurks online, gets 28,000/mo, and still complains about the job. Sigh… Anyway I’m driving her away.
Hmmm… maybe I should consider looking for an assistant here lol~[/quote]
Only 9 hours work per day for a whopping 28K? You should definitely get rid of that freeloader!
[quote=“jimipresley”][quote=“golf”]My stupid assistant comes around 9:15am and leaves no later than 6:15pm almost every day, writes Greek English I can’t understand, plurks online, gets 28,000/mo, and still complains about the job. Sigh… Anyway I’m driving her away.
Hmmm… maybe I should consider looking for an assistant here lol~[/quote]
Only 9 hours work per day for a whopping 28K? You should definitely get rid of that freeloader![/quote]
Most likely she gets a one hour lunch break so that would be 8 hours a day.
Remind me -I’ve been away too long- but weren’t we in the West including lunch time within the working hours? I’ve always felt it strange about that here.
If you commute, it means you are away from home more than 12 hours, even if you just head straight from work. I know because in summer I’d set the fans timers to the max, and when I come home they’re off.
Most likely she gets a one hour lunch break so that would be 8 hours a day.[/quote]
EXACTLY!
Who says she’s even doing 8 hours of work?
I bet it’s more like this: 3 hours of msn chatting and/or emailing and/or uploading 300 photos of the noodles she ate last night to her Facebook account, 2 hours of browsing/shopping on Yahoo, 2 hours of playing Farmville on Facebook, 1/2 hour of napping, 1/2 hour of actual work.
[quote=“GuyInTaiwan”]Who says she’s even doing 8 hours of work?
I bet it’s more like this: 3 hours of msn chatting and/or emailing and/or uploading 300 photos of the noodles she ate last night to her Facebook account, 2 hours of browsing/shopping on Yahoo, 2 hours of playing Farmville on Facebook, 1/2 hour of napping, 1/2 hour of actual work.[/quote]
Luckily she does not nap … Now I feel blessed 
Haha. So you’re saying she does all the other things though and out of eight hours you probably get one hour of real work from her, which is double what anyone else gets, so WOO HOO!
[quote=“Savvon”]Everyone needs to let off steam, sure. However, when complaints is all I ever hear all the time, I mean all the time, from us foreigners, it really brings me down. It reminds me of spoiled children throwing fits.
I cannot have a conversation with a foreigner without them complaining. This is why I am sensitive to complaints now days.[/quote]
You wrote such a lengthy response that I feel it is only polite to reply:
It is irritating when people are continually negative. It feels like they are sucking all the fun out of life.
However, first of all you need to take into account the kind of people you are dealing with. I don’t know whether it is classic emigration push factors (ie people are forced out of their home countries), or pull factors (ie they emigrate in order to get away with behaving badly), but a significant proportion of expats have appalling social skills. Consequently, a lot of people you meet here do not know how to behave, or simply aren’t interested in adhering to standard norms of behaviour.
Secondly, we expats are a pretty disparate bunch. As such, there is a tendency to create a we’re not like them (Taiwanese) in order to create a false sense of unity. This fuels the They’re terrible drivers. Their work ethic is stupid. They all lie. They don’t do things like we do… yawnfest you inevitably get if ever you join a bunch of semi-stranger expats for a beer outside a 7-11.
I think you either need to be prepared to empathise a bit more with the situation the habitual complainers are in (ie they’re lonely losers with terrible social skills), or be more selective about the people you mix with. I chose the latter option and the vast majority of my mates are very positive, although I accept fully that they will have a bad Taiwan day now and then and I’ll listen and nod my head while they let off steam.