Marko, a big ...adian, with Yugoslav roots and a mother with a cellar somewhere back in ...ada.
He'd somehow escaped the cellar, and on the back of a physics major and a pile of non-specific TEFL certificates, had been working in Japan. Our FAO thought she'd pulled off a wonderful coup, until he actually showed up. Gross in all his habits, including displaying on the front of his shirt what he had eaten-and that was a lot- over the last week. Cracked on to the most feeble minded and immature student he could find, then introduced her to one and all as "my girlfriend". Usually arrived at class, if at all, so late that the students had mostly given up and left. The few who remained wondered why they bothered. Borrowed money from anyone foolish enough to believe him. Maybe he was sending it home to his sick mother, but hitting on young Chinese teachers getting 1,000 a month, then having no recollection of the deal is a bit low. Even after he was sacked he came back begging.
Marko, for me, mapped the depths of desperation that otherwise intelligent FAO's, at [for China] reasonable schools, will plumb to recruit a white face. This bastard and other psychotics I could detail, unemployable in their own societies, were getting the same base salary as someone with teaching qualifications who takes their job seriously.
And that, also for me, is one of the true inequities of the whole EFL game in China.