Category — Protect Yourself

I was really touched by a quote recently I read from Bruce R McConkie. He was a church leader until his death in 1985. Not only was he a church leader, but he was also a leading theologian.

I know from time to time we experience trials and tribulations. Sometimes our walk is an arduous journey. I think he states so well the journey and reaching a goal and with just a few changes in words, it could fit just about any life situation, including the running of TEFLWatch.

The Church is like a great caravan–organized, prepared, following an appointed course, with its captains of tens and captains of hundreds all in place.

What does it matter if a few barking dogs snap at the heels of the weary travellers? Or that predators claim those few who fall by the way? The caravan moves on.

Is there a ravine to cross, a miry mud hole to pull through, a steep grade to climb? So be it. The oxen are strong and the teamsters wise. The caravan moves on.

Are there storms that rage along the way, floods that wash away the bridges, deserts to cross, and rivers to ford? Such is life in this fallen sphere. The caravan moves on.

Ahead is the celestial city, the eternal Zion of our God, where all who maintain their position in the caravan shall find food and drink and rest. Thank God that the caravan moves on!

When I decided to get out of the bad school reporting site business, it was a tough decision. I just couldn’t deal with the day in and day out harassment from a few socially inept teachers. They made my life difficult and went to the point of stalking me. I knew enough was enough so I decided to close up, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the teachers.

Luckily, just as TEFLWatch stopped the forum, two other sites leapt into the fray like vultures. I went ahead and passed the relevant post to a third site. A lot was said on these sites about how they were going to do much better than I could do and that I hadn’t done a good job.

Well, I think a month on, we can look at how well these sites have taken on their new charges. We see one site, Thai EFL Watch. It seems like an inordinate numbers of their posts seem to be from the troll Topper and “his” schools. Of course, he wants them to be thought of as good schools. TEFL Guardian has a lot of promise, but can’t get people to post on it. TEFL School Reviews is doing surprisingly well. Some people said it’s connection to the old TW Forum would be bad news, but that’s hasn’t proved the case.

I remember going with my dad when he would go out looking for a new car when I was growing up. It would invariably start with going to the dealer and meeting a salesman who seemed so focused on getting us into the office to buy a car without knowing our needs or capabilities. After a test drive with a salesman saying how well it drove and not letting my dad really test it out, we would go into the office and they would run credit reports and try to come up with something that would work in terms of payments and and down payment.

My dad was always concerned that he was getting the best deal possible, but most of all, he was concerned about the honesty of the car dealer. I am sure we have all had some horror stories about car dealers. Come on share them with me now!

It’s not nearly as difficult to buy a good used car as it once was thanks to CARCHEX. It’s a car buying concierge service. They will help you find a car and then they will check out the car and make sure that it’s as good as the owner says it is. They’ll help get financing and insurance and then they’ll help you protect your car with an extended warranty. CARCHEX will be with you every step of the way so that you can get a no hassle buying experience that will save you money. The best part of this great car buying concierge service is that it’s free!

I talked in a previous post about not letting them get you down. I talked about standing up and getting yourself out of a tough situation where it seems like others are doing their best to drag you down. This applies to bill collectors as much as anyone else. They call you up and spread their negativity. They don’t understand that if you could pay the bill, you would. They don’t understand the financial difficulties you are facing. Maybe they do and that’s why they want the money from you?

Either way, there is a way to fight back and that’s with debt settlement. It means getting someone in your corner to help you get the debt relief you need. It means getting a payment plan to get your debt back on track.

The experts at DebtConsolidation.com is just the team you need on your side. They will help you get the help you need to deal with your debt. They’ll even help you with a free confidential debt analysis. Remember, don’t let the bills get you down.

The best advice out there is to don’t let them get you down. There are people out there with such meaningless lives that they strive to make everyone’s life as miserable as there own. They will lie, cheat, or steal away your happiness. You might even voluntarily give up that happiness, but don’t do it. Recognize these light suckers for what they are.

Whether they are a Bob or a Richard, in fact it doesn’t matter what their name is, they are evil people who can never be happy and do not want anyone else to be happy. I, for one, have never been happier since pushing away light suckers. I learned to recognize the symptoms early on so that they couldn’t spread their poison.

Good riddance.

All good projects eventually get forked. If someone stops a project or abandons a project, there will always be someone there willing to take on the project, if the project is a good one. The change allows a group to take this project off in a new direction and it allows me to ensure that teachers are looked after.

The new project is called TEFL School Reviews. It is very much a work in progress and a lot more work needs to be done on it. Thankfully, it will not be work that I have to undertake.

The new project has already put up a forum, The TEFL School Reviews Forum. They were given a database cleaned of personally identifiable information and they are running that ship. They were also given access to the rate this school posts, ratings and comments. I’ve always made it clear that if something happened and I was unable to continue this site, for whatever reason, I would make sure the community could continue it. And that’s what I’ve done.

What lies ahead for TEFLWatch? I relish the opportunity to get my opinion out there on TEFL issues without being the spokesman for a TEFL blacklist site. I may come up with opinions that run counter to the new project and they may have some very negative opinions of me from time to time, but that is part of moving forward. Helping teachers in dealing with bad schools is a project much bigger and more important than I am.