My Career in Education

I was a junior in high school when I got my second job. It was an unusual job. I was in an unusual high school, the International School of Bangkok. My father, in a mid-life crisis, had joined the foreign service division of the Voice of America and it was our first overseas posting.

My mother was beside herself in anger at leaving her home state of North Carolina. Her blood pressure shot up and literally never came down until she stroked out at age 57. My brother, who had just started middle school and wanted a major league sports career, felt he was being deprived of his future, even though his Little League record was less than stellar. My sister wasn’t going because she was in college and engaged to be married.

I was the only one happy to go. I hated North Carolina. I hated my high school and fellow students. And my very inadequate boyfriend was already on the other side of the globe in Vietnam, next door to Thailand. We would see each other twice a year instead of once. It was fine with me.

One morning, just as I was beginning my junior year, a student job was posted to teach English as a foreign language at a business college. I was used to having my own money. I had been working since I was 15 at a movie theater in North Carolina. I had played teacher to my dolls as a child. I thought I could do it. I had nothing better to do on Saturdays. I took the address and negotiated the bus trip across Bangkok to the school offices.

The bus cost a single satang to ride, equivalent to less than a penny, so it was the most economical way to travel, although the buses were always full and you seldom got a seat. People actually hung from the doors and windows and rode on the outside. Sometimes there were caged chickens on the bus. I could also spend a whole 25 cents and take a samlor, which was like a golf cart with a back seat. Or I could go deluxe and spend a $1 and take a blue Datsun cab. But that would be wasteful. The cab drivers, thinking I was a tourist, would ask for $5 or more, and I would have to use the little Thai I knew to tell them I was on to their tricks and knew the going rate for locals.

The head of the business school looked like Buddha in a business suit. He sat on a rug on the ground, surrounded by cushions, incense, and statues of…I guess Buddha and other gods with many arms and legs. I was lucky I wasn’t sold into white slavery. My parents had no idea where this school was that I went to every Saturday. If I had disappeared, they wouldn’t even know where to start looking. I never knew the name of the school. The English on the sign just said Thai Business College.

He hired me on the spot. I thought life was always going to be this easy. I would teach three classes every Saturday morning. I would take attendance. They would listen to an English-speaking person speak. I would turn in grades. I only had to grade them on attendance.

The first year was exciting. The students were thrilled to meet me and treated me with respect even though I was a few years younger. The movie “To Sir With Love” was very popular in Thailand then. They called me Sir. They gave me love. At the end of each semester, they gave me little gifts. We took turns reading out loud from their text books and I would correct pronunciation. They would ask me to explain the lyrics to popular songs. It is not easy to explain the meaning of “yummy, yummy, yummy, I have love in my tummy” by Ohio Express or “do wah diddy diddy dum diddy doo” by Manfred Mann. I tried. They would laugh. They looked at me like I was a fascinating animal in a zoo. They had many questions about American life.

The hardest part of the job was taking attendance because the English translation of Thai names are very long, full of vowels and consonants that phonetically sounded like gibberish. They would laugh at my attempts to get through the roll call, but that was essentially their grade so it had to be done. I never got to the point where I could identify them by name. One hour a week wasn’t enough time to connect, and they all looked alike to me. Everyone’s hair was straight and black. They all wore the blue pants and skirts and white shirts and blouses which were the Thai school uniform.

And I had 120 or more students, divided up into three classes each semester. I made $30 a month, which I picked up in cash from the Buddha superintendent at the end of each month when I turned in my attendance records.

It was a princely sum since I could have a dress custom made for my measurements from a magazine picture, including the fabric, even Thai silk, for $5. A manicure was 50 cents, a pedicure 75 cents. I bought a fake hairpiece for $15 and I could have a mountain of curls and hair loops built on my head for $1.25. If I slept carefully, it would last the whole week. It made me look six inches taller. Shoes and handbags were as cheap as I could get the price down. I had a set to match every dress. Jewelry was a pittance, and we’re talking blue star sapphires set in silver. My family had a live-in maid who cleaned my room, made my bed, and washed and ironed my clothes. Kongkao was paid $25 a month and a bag of rice. Life was pretty good.

Things were great until the end of the second year when I had disruptive male students in my class. This was unusual because the Thai culture is built around showing respect for authority. In American schools, disruptive students were sent out of the classroom. I tried that. Everyone was shocked. Having a conflict was embarrassing to everyone, even the ones being evicted. Face was lost. Theirs and mine. They got cocky and challenged it, but gave up when I held firm. The good atmosphere was ruined after that. Everyone became nervous and uncertain. We laughed less.

I was glad the semester was ending and since I was leaving for college back in the States, I turned in my resignation and didn’t teach the summer session. There was no love for Sir anymore. Buddha Superintendent was sad to see me go. I probably lasted longer than any other American high school student – two years – and had been diligent. The way it ended soured me on being a teacher and I never taught anywhere again.

Attacked by the Japanese, Order & Chaos

It started with an email from Apple saying it was curious that I had purchased the Order and Chaos app, an online game, from a computer I didn’t normally use in the middle of the night. Was I all right?

No, I wasn’t. That wasn’t my purchase, so I rushed to my computer to change my password, only to find my iTunes account had been taken over by some kids in Kyoto, Japan and left in shambles. Whenever I logged in, iTunes would dissolve into the Japanese version. Although my name and address was the same on my account, my city and country were now Kyoto, Japan. And I didn’t recognize the credit card.

They didn’t steal my money as they replaced my credit card with a card that would work in Japan, which changed my country code in the process. Nothing I did would move my iTunes account back into English. Because the credit card number had come up as fraudulent – the billing address didn’t match mine – Apple was insisting I settle that matter before I could make any changes to my account. And I couldn’t. Every time I entered one of my credit card numbers, it rejected it because it didn’t match my billing address, which was now Koyoto, Japan. And I couldn’t fix my address until I entered a valid credit card number. I was stuck in a loop.

How come it was so easy for my hackers?

Apple doesn’t make it easy to reach a human in iTunes support. They have robot operators who sound very human -- the precursors of Siri -- and many press 1 for this and press 2 for that choices that solve most routine iTunes problems, but "My Account Was Hacked by Japanese Kids" was a choice in any menu. I futilely hit every button and verbally requested “A human” at every menu, and finally, a voice came on saying there was a 5-minute wait for a human. By then I was already two hours into my attempt to fix my iTunes account, so this seemed like a blessing. As is often the case, the wait time is exaggerated to discourage you from holding. A human came on almost immediately after I agreed to wait.

I explained my dilemma and the young man with a Valley Girl lilt to his voice asked for my computer serial number. Do I have to turn the computer upside down to find it? And why do you want it? This isn't a computer hardware problem. He insisted he needed it. We found where it was hidden, three clicks into the About This Mac panel. He told me my 90 days of free telephone support had expired.

Well, I know that. I’ve had this computer a couple of years, and it isn’t a hardware problem! I don’t need support to explain something to me! I need these damn Japanese kids out of my iTunes account! He agreed that fraudulent activity was its own category and politely forwarded me on to another young man with a Midwestern accent. We both agreed this was a baffling crime since they had stolen nothing from me except my ability to use my iTunes account since it was frozen over the issue of the unpaid app purchase. “iTunes accounts are free,” he said, puzzled.

(My husband later suggested that maybe the credit card was stolen so they needed to weld it onto an account that couldn’t be traced to them. It was only a 600 yen purchase, which is about $7.74.)

It was a struggle to delete the purchase and forgive the debt, thus enabling me to change my address back to the United States and reenter my own credit card and reset my password. The first half dozen tries failed, and finally my guy had to kick it upstairs to another team of computer wizards. He would come back from hold and say, “Try it now.” I would try it and say, “Still in Japan.” This went on for another two hours. When we finally landed back in the United States, it rejected my credit card. The account was now flagged for “unusual activity” due to all our finagling. I was locked out. It took another 30 minutes to override that.

At the end, when the Apple guy should really have been tired of dealing with me, he patiently sat through my long tirade about what I had gone through to connect with him. I wanted an explanation of how this happened; how did the hackers do it when it was so difficult to undo it? And what was the point? He didn’t know and offered no theories. And so ended my 4.5 hours with Apple support.

But I have to say, they were good. The robot support menu would have solved most things. The first Valley Boy was good about recognizing a special situation and letting me go through the phone support portal despite being out of warranty, and the iTunes team really put in a morning’s work releasing me from Japanese attack. They should have been at Pearl Harbor.

Naturally, I had to google Order and Chaos and see what was so special about this game. The logo is one of those big-eyed Japanese anime kids in medieval dress. Then I googled "Order and Chaos hackers" and found complaints going back to the beginning of the year of similar iTunes robberies for this game and a Texas Hold ‘Em poker game. What the hackers were stealing were credits. Apparently many people don’t feel safe leaving a credit card open on their iTunes account so they purchase gift cards and enter the credits. Someone with a list of iTunes user names and passwords could write a program sweeping through the accounts and downloading all the available credits with purchases for poker chips or extra powers and weapons for this Order and Chaos game. And then they could resell them as virtual goods.

The credit card number that replaced mine was probably just a bogus one to sweep my account into Japan since it only worked for yen purchases, and the point was to steal credits, not actually use the card. At least that’s my theory.

And the other weird thing was I had just read in Steve Jobs’ biography that his favorite place in the world was the Kyoto, Japan gardens, and I had made a mental note to google it and see the pictures, only to wake up and find my iTunes account had gone to Kyoto without me that same night. Odd? Mystical.

My Hollywood Career

My first job was at a movie theater concession stand. The second I turned 15, I got my worker’s permit and applied to the first place that appealed to me. I was hired on the spot. I thought life was always going to be this easy.

An actual crone in the actual ticket booth
of the actual Pitt Theatre

The Pitt Theatre had been my social life since I was 11. We moved to a small North Carolina college town from the outskirts of New York City, and I might as well have landed on another planet. With my coarse, dark hair and harsh accent, I was immediately ostracized by a population of school girls who looked like cheerleaders and blonde boys with Mercury astronaut buzzcuts. So I spent the weekends in the two movie theaters in town, the State and the Pitt, one across the street from the other. My mother would drop me off. I’d see the 1 p.m. show; cross the street and see the 3 p.m. show. Then I would walk a block to the library and wait for my ride home. It was easy to do. A child’s ticket was 25 cents back then. I saw everything, and if the movie at the second theater was not to my taste, I saw the first movie twice. This was a time when you could spend the entire day in a theater. No ushers ushered you out.

The Pitt was the nicer of the two, so I went there first and asked to see the manager. I did not have to answer 20 questions posed by a panel of three. We came to terms immediately. I would report after school every day and work until 6 p.m. On weekends, I would arrive in time for the first show. I would sell candy, popcorn, soda, and snowcones. Snowcones were tricky to make, so I was glad they were seldom ordered. I was thrilled.

The elderly theater owner was also the daytime projectionist, and his elderly wife opened the concession stand each day, stocked the cash drawer and supplies. Another elderly woman sat in the ticket box. By hiring me, the owner’s wife could now leave as soon as I arrived and have the rest of her day free. I worked until the nightshift came on, another husband and wife team who worked as projectionist and concessions and closed the theater after the last show. Another old woman was in the ticket booth at night.

There was seldom anything going on during the 3-6 p.m. shift. I would serve less than a half dozen customers. The theater did inventory by cups, so if I bought a cup at the beginning of my shift, I could refill it several times for free. Candy was carefully counted at the end of the night and had to match the cash drawer, so you couldn’t stuff your face without paying. But there was a nice assortment of 2 cent candies, including Tootsie Roll Pops. A chocolate Tootsie Roll Pop, sucked slow, could last a long time.

From the concession stand, I could hear the movie, and if I opened the door in the back, I could see it. The 3 p.m. show would be underway by the time I had squared away my few customers, and my shift was over halfway through the 5 p.m. show, so I heard all the movies backward those years, the ending first, then the beginning. To this day, I prefer to watch films that way. And I like Tootsie Roll Pops.

Weekends were busier, but less fun because the other woman was there all day, too. I had to share my private little candy world. But I also got to work the much busier evening shift, sometimes as late as 9:30 when the audience for the last movie of the night had settled in.

I worked there for almost two years, until we moved. Whenever someone paid with a Kennedy half dollar, I covered it with my own money and took the Kennedys home. It was a flawed savings plan because my hefty bank deposits of Kennedy halves were exciting to look at, but when you withdrew your money, you didn’t get Kennedy halves back. I guess I could have asked for them, but in the end, my treasure trove didn’t matter. It all went to buy my incredibly bad boyfriend his first car, a Ford Falcon stick shift I couldn’t even drive.

My fondest memories:

The movies changed every week, but “Sound of Music” was so popular, it played for an entire month, and we even added weekend shows. There was a lot of overtime. People dressed up to come see it. I heard the soundtrack so many times, for years afterward I could sing (badly) the entire score.

I lived in a college town, and the Clint Eastwood spaghetti westerns would actually bring in business during my slow day shifts. College boys came to the matinees. They seemed exotic and dangerous and laughed at the over-the-top gun slinging.

On weekends, if there was a kid movie playing, too many parents would drop their kids off unattended. Sometimes they did it for horror movies, too (which looking back, were not that horrible compared to now). The scared kids would hang out at the concession stand with me rather than go inside the theater, all full of fake bluster and bravery.

Once in a rare while, the crones who sat in the ticket booth took time off. Usually the nightshift concession woman took over the tickets and I was called in to work night concessions, but if it was a really big movie, everyone thought she could handle concessions alone better than me, so I got the ticket booth. This was the most exciting thing, to be in the box, the face of the theater, distributing the magic tickets. It was even more heady when kids I knew from school, the cheerleaders and Mercury astronauts, had to stand on line for me to sell them a ticket. Somehow I felt vindicated.

Even though it was released in 1962, the film “Phaedra” with Anthony Perkins and Melina Mercouri played during my concession years. It was a racy movie and something of a local sensation. People almost wore hoods and masks when they came to see it, as if they were in an adult bookstore. The plot was the wife of a Greek shipping tycoon seduces his son from a previous marriage. It was adults-only, but no one thought to ban the 15-year-old girl working the concession stand. Even so, the film seemed so erotically steamy to me, I could only bear to open the back door of the concession booth briefly to see what was going on. Recently I watched it on Netflix and couldn't even sit through it, it was so tedious.

When we moved, this job was the only thing I missed about living in that town. I could have gone far in the movie business.