ESL Conference

Today instead of interviews I attended a conference on English teaching at Thammasat University.  A friend and I went for the whole day.  Took a boat to avoid the morning rush hour.  After checking in there was a welcome ceremony and speech given by the department dean.  I noticed that the majority of attendees were female.  Almost 98% I’d say.  Guess English teachers in Thailand are traditionally women… though I guess that’s true in the US as well.  There were two sessions in the morning and two more in the afternoon.  Her lecturers were good.  Mine sucked.  Three of the four presented nothing new whatsoever.  One guy wasn’t even done with his research… or had started it even!  How the hell did he get invited to be a speaker?!  Another lady gave a lecture on the history of technology in teaching.  Again, nothing new.  The lecture titles were very misleading.  Next time I’ll be more informed as to the content.  So much for learning new techniques in English teaching.  At least my friend came away with something positive.

After a long day we went back into the city, grabbed some dinner, and decided there was still time in the day to go over to Fortune.  A worker there had tried calling me 12 times during the day!  After I called back I discovered that they printed my cards on glossy paper after I explicitly told them to use matte.  And I even attached a previous card for reference.  Idiots!

Luckily when we arrived the lady I had spoken with on Saturday was there.  She explained it as the worker made the mistake but didn’t want to admit it.  Thanks.  But inthe end she agreed to reprint them using the correct paper.  Given the cheap cost I increaed my order and said I would order more for my other employee.  See?  Good customer service can remedy any problem.