The time around chinese new year is usually when people will start cleaning out their apartment. As such, you will generally start to see furniture on the street waiting to be picked up by the special furniture trash pick up service.
Sometimes when walking by, I will see some generally nice things, or something that i could really use. So far I've yet to fall low enough to take in trash furniture, but with this being my second year of being a chinese student, let's just say I'm perusing much more than I should be.
I always wonder when will be the day that I take home some thrown out furniture. It's hard to stay on the high ground when money is generally going out and not coming in.
Another quandary is tutoring children. Generally being a foreigner means that some mothers will stop you on the street and ask you to tutor their children. I have nothing against tutoring kids, however I have a rule against tutoring kids who don't want it. Student life in Taiwan is bad enough and I don't want to add to it. Plus I was one of those kids who was forced to learn a bunch of things as a kid. You know those things where your parents will say "you will thank me for this when you are older." Well I guess I am still not old enough, because looking back I can only look upon those things as torture.
So I do not want to contribute to a child's misery. Meaning I will speak to them, and if they want a tutor than great, I can make sure they get one, but if they don't want one, I'll make up some excuse to tell the parent why it can't be done, so the parent blames me and not their kid.
Also any good tutor views the client as the student, not their parents. So if the student doesn't want to learn, than it's a waste of time for both the student and teacher, time that teacher could be using on teaching somebody who actually wants to learn. Not to mention if the student doesn't want to learn than the student isn't really going to improve at all. Meaning the teacher is essentially just taking the parents' money, for nothing.
So here's hoping that I never loose my morality end up torturing some kid who doesn't want anything to do with learning English, while taking money from their parents who think that hiring a tutor will magically improve their kids English ability, while really the kid is not improving at all cause he doesn't care to learn.
Yuck, I think i'd rather take street furniture first.
