Jump to content
Sign in to follow this  
Voltaire

Update on what I've been up to lately

Recommended Posts

Maybe you'd not noticed, or cared, that I'd been cutting down on my posting lately, that may or may not be a temporary thing, i don't know right now. I'm in no danger of actually leaving like so many have over the years, I'll always need a place online with Americans to interact with and talk about whatever and that's still here. But things are in flux and so I'm not focking off and wasting my time online as much as usual.



As for what's new with me, the big thing is we're taking our school legal now which requires a huge investment of money for a size we don't need to meet all the requirements. Until now, we'd just been a penny-ante school operating out of a spare room in our house then renting a house to use the living room to hold classes. Now we're renting commercial space and having a staff and looking all professional like we know what we're doing and ... well there goes all my savings. We're the first occupant so what had just been a concrete slab is getting all the fixtures, amenities, drywall, doors, windows, bathrooms, etc on my dime.



We'd grown to over 100 students illegally on the downlow without advertising but by word of mouth. So we're doing that, we should have a school license by mid-2019. But you need the place before they'll give it to you. Now I'm at the mid-point where the anxiety of having put the money in, without actually having the licence.



We've had the unlicensed school for a few years so in the back of my head, I've always know that they can crack down at any time. But since they haven't, I'm happy as is.



My wife is handling it all. It's all in Chinese. I'm half-expecting a visit from some a$$hole from The Office of BuIIshit You Never Heard Of Before to arrive and say, well now that you're 120K yuan in and have drained your savings, you need my stamp for approval and here's this regulation you didn't know about until just now and it'll cost another 30K to satisfy. I don't know if we've done everything right, we've never done this before but you hear stories. Maybe we are doing it right and it all goes smooth.



But yeah, not fully grasping the law or if it'll be applied regularly, trusting my wife, looking at a half finished school and a big hole in my bank account, and not having that approved school license is kind of where I'm at right now. A little bit of stress for sure.



And then the really bad, even worse thing that keeps me awake at night is if I don't regain my posting stride soon, Northern Vike or HT likely catches me and bumps me off of page one of the post count list.


  • Like 3

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Wow. Starting your own school isn't something you hear about every day. :cheers:

 

What are you calling it? I'm sure the geeks can help you think of a name if you haven't come up with one yet.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

That's awesome Volty! I respect your willingness to take this risk and chase your dream, best of luck. :thumbsup:

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

That's awesome Volty! I respect your willingness to take this risk and chase your dream, best of luck. :thumbsup:

Sound more like a nightmare to me..... :shocking:

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Best of luck- hopefully the local inspectors take it easy because of it being a school and all.

Then again, you are a round eye trying to succeed, so theres that.

 

Best of luck!

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

The chinks probably wont hassle you too much for the license. Theyve got a billion and a half of their own people to worry about.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

So serious question- youve been in China all these years running an illegal school ??

Or did I read that wrong ?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

So serious question- youve been in China all these years running an illegal school ??

Or did I read that wrong ?

 

Yeah, that's what I read. Seems dangerous to do in Communist China.

 

What's the Chinese word for "Gulag"?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

So serious question- youve been in China all these years running an illegal school ??

Or did I read that wrong ?

If I recall, he taught at a legit school for a while. Then sorta retired from that to teach privately.

 

Sounds like his private thing is going public which means he has to make it legit.

 

:dunno:

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

That's pretty cool though. I hope your investment works out. Are you doing this more for money, or just to be your own boss?

Well... eh.. the own boss stuff has been kind of the way it has been lately for a long time anyways. It use to be that if you worked at this school, you'd teach the stuff they want you to teach but I'd not worked like that in many years. Write lesson plans, fock that.

 

Lately though, even when I was at the kindergarten, they didn't give me oversight, I was doing my own thing - mostly. This month's theme is vegetables, next is Christmas, next is weather, so maybe i didn't like the order or not as I didn't have any say in selecting the month's theme, but what I was doing with the theme was entirely decided by me. I would come in with a 20-30 minute class each day based on the theme. I've had full control of what I'm doing for many years now anyway.

 

I think the answer to your question is .... my wife. This is kind of her thing. She was a working professional project manager with her own small staff handling the intersection where real estate meets construction. She made good money but was working long, crazy hours. Insane hours. She gave that up to be a stay-at-home-mom for like eight years, then when the children were older, got the itch to work again, but not in the massive time-suck or real estate anymore this time but teaching, which is what I'd been doing all along.

 

As for money, well that too obviously. I'm building our school in our suburb a few minutes walk from where I live. After leaving the kindergarten work, I've got an arrangement with a partner downtown that's 50/50. He has a school and advertises and pays the teaching assistant out of his half and I teach and get the other half. And that's a reasonable intermediary step, but it's a better arrangement for me when I get all the money then subtract expenses.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
And then the really bad, even worse thing that keeps me awake at night is if I don't regain my posting stride soon, Northern Vike or HT likely catches me and bumps me off of page one of the post count list.

 

 

Man I know what you mean. I have been trying to get to page one of post count since 1999. I figure I am at over 7000 days which is like almost 0.7 posts per day. You would think that would be enough.

 

But congrats on the really important stuff!!! :cheers:

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

So serious question- youve been in China all these years running an illegal school ??

Or did I read that wrong ?

Mostly I've worked for other people or in partnership. It's really only been three years that we've done the school on our own. And even then, I've continued to work elsewhere, partly because the school was too small to support us and partly out of fear of putting all the eggs in one basket.

 

And the school has been unlicensed which is a legal gray area. You take your chances that they'll ignore you if you don't do anything wrong. A lot of unlicensed school are illegitimate (not just EFL but all types of schools) , they open, take the students' money and disappear or provide shoddy classes. Every year or so, there's a wave of crackdowns ... and we've never been cracked down on. I like to think it's because we're really a legitimate school that keeps it's head down and have never defrauded anyone. That's not entirely the case though. I've got a friend downtown and there's not a lick of difference between what I've been doing and what he's doing and he got caught up in the last crackdown. He didn't get deported but had to pay a fee. Maybe it's because he advertises and we don't and I think a real trigger was that he had some flash point with an angry parent that brought unwanted attention his way.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

If they call for that 30k Yuan, I'll paypal you the $5 American that converts into. For the kids.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
Sign in to follow this  

×