English Teacher for Sale or Rent

Last week I finally bit the bullet and handed out a simple flyer to three local shopkeepers who have been enquiring about English lessons.  I've been delaying because I was in a real dilemma about what to charge.  If I offer free lessons there is the risk that I will be inundated with requests and will end up working too hard for nothing and resenting it.  On the other hand if I price lessons at European rates they would simply be unaffordable for most local people.

On the basis that it's easier to drop your prices than to raise them I've started high, basing my rates on my earning forty ringgits per hour (about £10).  Bearing in mind that an hour of teaching will take me at least an hour to prepare, then that brings me down to £5 per hour, lower than the minimum wage in the UK, if there still is one.  Not much for Europe, but still a lot for rural Borneo, where a school teacher earns about £500 per month and a shop worker maybe a fraction of that.

Why bother at all you may ask?  I guess there are two reasons, firstly, I want if possible to leave Borneo at the end of two years with some practical experience as a teacher, which would help me get teaching work back in Italy or wherever we end up next.  Secondly, and more importantly, I need to do something to combat my growing sense of uselessness and irrelevance - a feeling not uncommon to those of us in our fifties - and to everyone else for that matter, in these difficult times.  Oh dear, now it sounds like I'm complaining, something I said I would try never to do, because of the risk of getting a sock in the jaw from people who think that someone living the life of Riley has no right to moan about it.  Fair enough.


Anyway, a week has now gone by without any follow up enquiries so I may have to drop my prices.  Watch this space.  The picture on the right, by the way, is one I took when we were on Langkawi.  I thought he (or she) looked appropriately middle-aged and pensive.