Tuesday 30 October 2007
Sunday 21 October 2007
Death and Taxes
So - update number one.
The plan has already changed, and somehow Japan feels further away than ever.
When this blog was opened, we were quite comfortable with our plan to return to Japan with the English conversation school that I had previously worked with, NOVA Corporation. When I had gone with NOVA before, I had been recruited through the Melbourne sub-contractor office, AACE - who charge a $500 administraiton fee per person that no other branch of NOVA recruitment charges. So we thought, rather than spend our $500 on an administration fee, we would spend it coming up to Brisbane and be recruited through a different office. Airfares from Queensland to Japan are substantially cheaper, and so, we booked our tickets to Brisbane and thought that we would be exiting Australia pretty promptly after that.
But then there were some major changes that no one could have foreseen.
NOVA has been quite famous in Japan for it's dodgy business practices. The joke was that NO-VA stands for NO VAcations - and they had the lowest number of paid holidays for their international teaching staff of any of the big English conversation schools. They have been sued many times by ex-employees for unfair dismissals, and they had a 'non-association' policy that bought them several appearances in human rights courts in Japan. They recently lost a case regarding their refund practices - previously NOVA had a 'no refunds' policy - which although it was unpopular, meant that the company made a profit whether the student attended their lessons or not. Due to NOVA losing this case, it meant that billions of yen worth of refunds were required to be paid out. NOVA's share price plumetted 16% in one day, and reports of teachers and branch staff not being paid on time began to creep across the internet. According to The Japan Times (an English language Japanese newspaper) staff have been paid late for the last 2 months - the first stage in the downward spiral that has marked the end of many big English teaching companies in Japan. The trend is to pull resources out of staffing to meet operational costs and try to keep the business afloat long enough for the company to be bought out, re-financed, and saved from bankruptcy. More often than not the company goes belly-up before a buyer can be found. NOVA have 5,000 foreign language teachers working for them, all recruited from overseas. If NOVA collapses, there will be a flood of unqualified English speakers looking for jobs to make enough money to get them home.
Our plans to go to Japan had been largely based on the idea that we wanted a stable job. We've been surviving on casual and contract employment for the last 2-3 years and it's left us stressed out and exhausted. We've had no leave so we've had bugger all time off. Every day we don't work is a day we don't get paid, and it's difficult to relax and enjoy a holiday when you know that you're setting yourself up for a deficit that will take weeks, if not months, to recoup. Either way, with NOVA displaying death wobbles, we weren't willing to commit to more insecurity, given that was the major reason for wanting to teach English in Japan was security. With the huge number of employees from NOVA threatening to spill onto the market, it is more important than ever to have a secure job before hitting Japanese shores.
Anyway - we found out about all of this NOVA Corporation stuff after we had booked our flights to Brisbane, and so we decided to pursue the original plan. Come to Brisbane, and sort out our recruitment for Japan from here. I'm staying with my Uncle John in a far flung Northern suburb (and when I say far flung, I'm talking 25 minutes to walk to the bus stop, 10 minutes on the bus and then 40 minutes on the train to get to the CBD). John and his wife Tracey have been very hospitable and have allowed us to set up shop in one of the numerous spare bedrooms in this big house of theirs. It is lovely to feel so welcomed.
We've begun to put together our applications for ECC, which is the second largest English teaching company in Japan. The major drawback is that earliest that ECC will send us to Japan is in May 2008, and they require that we pass a grammar test (as opposed to a pulse test - NOVA do not require that you know anything, merely that you are alive and have a degree of some description). We are looking to enrol in a TOIEC instruction course in November with a grammar component to ensure that we are on top of our game when it comes to the big day.
In the meantime, we have arrived - unemployed, nearly dead broke, and exhausted - in Brisbane; and now we need to find employment. There's lots of jobs around up here, as opposed to in Tasmania where jobs are scarce. I have a temp placement on Monday for one day, but I really need to get something a bit more substantial than that before I can feel comfortable about our future. To find employment, we need to get a car, to get a car we need money, to get money we need a job... Or we could move closer to the city to find employment, bypassing the need for a car - but then we still need money to get the house, and for that we need the job! Either way, nothing is simple... ever.
All these changes in plan... we were hoping to be on a plane to Japan by now, but it looks like we're going to have to be patient and wait our turn - it reminds me of the essential truth about plans for the future - that there is nothing certain in life - except death and taxes.
Not that all is gloom and doom. Queensland is presenting a welcome little diversion. As far a place to relax and re-focus our efforts for our assault on Japan, this is ideal. The vegetation is lush, green, tropical and foreign to our Tasmanian sensibilities. There are huge lizards that live in the pond down the road – water dragons, I’m told. Ibis and cranes wander about in the parks. There’s rosellas, galahs, cockatoos – and last night we saw a mating pair of king parrots – rainforest birds that have been driven into suburbia due to the drought. I'd never seen anything like it. Even the replacement of wattlebirds with magpies and top-knot pigeons is exotic and foreign. There's a koala that lives in the neighbours garden that we hear at night. We both love plants and animals, and we've been greatly entertained by the abundance of natural distraction here.
Brisbane itself is bustling and prosperous compared to the Dresden-like eeriness of the streets of Hobart in the wake of the Myers fire. Tom and I have really enjoyed eating some tropical fruits. We plan to visit the botanical gardens before too long, and there's also the Asia-Pacific Trienial on as well. It's different. And I think part of the reason that Hobart was getting on my nerves so much is that it all felt so same-ish.
A change in plans is not necessarily a bad thing. I’m quietly hoping that this will mean that we will arrive in Japan better prepared than we would have if we had left earlier. Either way, Japan will happen. It might just happen a little later than we had hoped.
The plan has already changed, and somehow Japan feels further away than ever.
When this blog was opened, we were quite comfortable with our plan to return to Japan with the English conversation school that I had previously worked with, NOVA Corporation. When I had gone with NOVA before, I had been recruited through the Melbourne sub-contractor office, AACE - who charge a $500 administraiton fee per person that no other branch of NOVA recruitment charges. So we thought, rather than spend our $500 on an administration fee, we would spend it coming up to Brisbane and be recruited through a different office. Airfares from Queensland to Japan are substantially cheaper, and so, we booked our tickets to Brisbane and thought that we would be exiting Australia pretty promptly after that.
But then there were some major changes that no one could have foreseen.
NOVA has been quite famous in Japan for it's dodgy business practices. The joke was that NO-VA stands for NO VAcations - and they had the lowest number of paid holidays for their international teaching staff of any of the big English conversation schools. They have been sued many times by ex-employees for unfair dismissals, and they had a 'non-association' policy that bought them several appearances in human rights courts in Japan. They recently lost a case regarding their refund practices - previously NOVA had a 'no refunds' policy - which although it was unpopular, meant that the company made a profit whether the student attended their lessons or not. Due to NOVA losing this case, it meant that billions of yen worth of refunds were required to be paid out. NOVA's share price plumetted 16% in one day, and reports of teachers and branch staff not being paid on time began to creep across the internet. According to The Japan Times (an English language Japanese newspaper) staff have been paid late for the last 2 months - the first stage in the downward spiral that has marked the end of many big English teaching companies in Japan. The trend is to pull resources out of staffing to meet operational costs and try to keep the business afloat long enough for the company to be bought out, re-financed, and saved from bankruptcy. More often than not the company goes belly-up before a buyer can be found. NOVA have 5,000 foreign language teachers working for them, all recruited from overseas. If NOVA collapses, there will be a flood of unqualified English speakers looking for jobs to make enough money to get them home.
Our plans to go to Japan had been largely based on the idea that we wanted a stable job. We've been surviving on casual and contract employment for the last 2-3 years and it's left us stressed out and exhausted. We've had no leave so we've had bugger all time off. Every day we don't work is a day we don't get paid, and it's difficult to relax and enjoy a holiday when you know that you're setting yourself up for a deficit that will take weeks, if not months, to recoup. Either way, with NOVA displaying death wobbles, we weren't willing to commit to more insecurity, given that was the major reason for wanting to teach English in Japan was security. With the huge number of employees from NOVA threatening to spill onto the market, it is more important than ever to have a secure job before hitting Japanese shores.
Anyway - we found out about all of this NOVA Corporation stuff after we had booked our flights to Brisbane, and so we decided to pursue the original plan. Come to Brisbane, and sort out our recruitment for Japan from here. I'm staying with my Uncle John in a far flung Northern suburb (and when I say far flung, I'm talking 25 minutes to walk to the bus stop, 10 minutes on the bus and then 40 minutes on the train to get to the CBD). John and his wife Tracey have been very hospitable and have allowed us to set up shop in one of the numerous spare bedrooms in this big house of theirs. It is lovely to feel so welcomed.
We've begun to put together our applications for ECC, which is the second largest English teaching company in Japan. The major drawback is that earliest that ECC will send us to Japan is in May 2008, and they require that we pass a grammar test (as opposed to a pulse test - NOVA do not require that you know anything, merely that you are alive and have a degree of some description). We are looking to enrol in a TOIEC instruction course in November with a grammar component to ensure that we are on top of our game when it comes to the big day.
In the meantime, we have arrived - unemployed, nearly dead broke, and exhausted - in Brisbane; and now we need to find employment. There's lots of jobs around up here, as opposed to in Tasmania where jobs are scarce. I have a temp placement on Monday for one day, but I really need to get something a bit more substantial than that before I can feel comfortable about our future. To find employment, we need to get a car, to get a car we need money, to get money we need a job... Or we could move closer to the city to find employment, bypassing the need for a car - but then we still need money to get the house, and for that we need the job! Either way, nothing is simple... ever.
All these changes in plan... we were hoping to be on a plane to Japan by now, but it looks like we're going to have to be patient and wait our turn - it reminds me of the essential truth about plans for the future - that there is nothing certain in life - except death and taxes.
Not that all is gloom and doom. Queensland is presenting a welcome little diversion. As far a place to relax and re-focus our efforts for our assault on Japan, this is ideal. The vegetation is lush, green, tropical and foreign to our Tasmanian sensibilities. There are huge lizards that live in the pond down the road – water dragons, I’m told. Ibis and cranes wander about in the parks. There’s rosellas, galahs, cockatoos – and last night we saw a mating pair of king parrots – rainforest birds that have been driven into suburbia due to the drought. I'd never seen anything like it. Even the replacement of wattlebirds with magpies and top-knot pigeons is exotic and foreign. There's a koala that lives in the neighbours garden that we hear at night. We both love plants and animals, and we've been greatly entertained by the abundance of natural distraction here.
Brisbane itself is bustling and prosperous compared to the Dresden-like eeriness of the streets of Hobart in the wake of the Myers fire. Tom and I have really enjoyed eating some tropical fruits. We plan to visit the botanical gardens before too long, and there's also the Asia-Pacific Trienial on as well. It's different. And I think part of the reason that Hobart was getting on my nerves so much is that it all felt so same-ish.
A change in plans is not necessarily a bad thing. I’m quietly hoping that this will mean that we will arrive in Japan better prepared than we would have if we had left earlier. Either way, Japan will happen. It might just happen a little later than we had hoped.
Sunday 14 October 2007
Friday 5 October 2007
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