One of the things that has been so eye-opening about the whole multi-language school fiasco is how little it bothers most people, least of all the Indonesian police or the Ministry of Education. There have been many thousands of people defrauded of hundreds or even thousands of dollars each, with the total losses clearly running…
What do gangster tattoos and the sheer, comic incompetence of the TBI Mafia have in common? Not much you would think. However, I recently read a review of a book called Codes of the Underworld: How Criminals Communicate which made me reconsider my opinion. I now see that gangster tats and the incompetence of the Lilies…
In this part we focus on the ugliest of all the new kids on the block, our old nemesis, Rumah Bahasa. This hideous brainchild of sociopathic con-man Frendy Horas was surely the nastiest excuse for a language school to have appeared in Indonesia in the past decade. Nothing more than a elaborate con, Rumah Bahasa…
Well, even for jaded, cynical TBI observers such as ourselves, we are surprised by just how low their fortunes have sunk. In recent weeks they have started once again advertising or teachers on online jobs websites, notably Dave’s ESL Cafe. There are now two successive teachers who have come onto the discussion forum and revealed…
As we made clear in Parts 1 and 2, TBI (The British Institute) has long blamed its recruitment woes on the Education Ministry regulation that English teachers in Indonesia need to have a degree in English or Applied Linguistics or a Masters of TESOL. They have long portrayed themselves as the victims of unfair and…
In the past few days, a teacher who TBI Malang tried to recruit has come on Dave’s ESL Cafe and alleged that Scott Martin has told him that Indonesian law is ”a grey area” with regards to employing teachers on business consultant visas. In other words, Martin has been caught red-handed lying to potential teachers…
In the past few days, a teacher has come on Dave’s ESL Cafe and made some damning revelations about Scott Martin of TBI. The teacher has alleged that Scott Martin lied to him that teaching on business visas was ”a grey area” in terms of legality. This is another bare-faced lie from Scott Martin, the…
In a previous post I mentioned Black Swan Theory, which was introduced by Lebanese mathematician Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his book, “The Black Swan.” In this post I aim to look at the extent to which the English degree requirement could be considered to be a black swan event. More specifically I want to examine…
In the past year or so, TBI has finally become a registered company, PT. Titian Buana Ilmu. What did you make of this development? They had been talking about registering as a company for a long time, but like most of their plans, it took much longer to happen than they planned. Many years longer.…
During the time I lived in Indonesia, it traded in a band of between 8,500 and 10,000 rupiah, hovering around the 9,000 rupiah mark for much of the time. It was broadly stable during these years from 2005 to 2012, meaning that your Indonesian salary held its value reasonably well. The main threat was inflation,…
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