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Bio Facts about Mekhong Kurt

Born in Texas, the first half of my education was in a British-style private school, complete with a headmaster, my parents helped found.  (That always shocked people -- such a school in TEXAS???)  The second half was in a rural public school, from which I graduated.  Along the way my Mother, Sister, and I lived for a few months in San Miguel de Allende, northwest of Mexico City, in 1963, then in Guanajuato, in the same general area as San Miguel de Allende, for what turned out to be only a few weeks in 1964.  While in San Miguel de Allende, my Sister and I attended a Catholic convent school near our home -- we aren't Catholic, but that was the only school in town in those days.

My undergraduate education took me 6½ years to complete.  I majored in English and minored in history, though my real wish was to become an officer in the U.S. Air Force; to that end, I enrolled in AFROTC (training while in university), but my eyesight is so bad that when it came to my physical to go on contract status, I learned I couldn't be even a ground officer.  So I transferred to Army ROTC -- this was during the Vietnam War, and not only did the Army accept me, but as a Combat Arms Officer; I was in training to become a tank commander.  At the time, I was completely fascinated by the famous World War II general, George S. Patton, and secretly thought of myself as the next Patton!  But the war had the audacity to end, posing a real threat to cadets about to go on active duty, as there was a major move to greatly reduce the size of the armed forces.  I reluctantly accepted the option of completing the semester then being honorably discharged without having ever served a single day on active duty.

I did a variety of things during my undergraduate years, primarily security work and a stint as a rural police officer.  In the mid 70's -- I *still* hadn't finished school -- I got a job as a patrol officer with a prestigious security patrol firm in Dallas.  I found I liked that end of things far better than I had liked by stint as a public police officer, as it focused much more on service than police officers have time to perform, service I found deeply satisfying.  I left for a year or so later, then returned -- only to be caught in a reduction in force in 1981, by which time I had reached the rank of Lieutenant, third in the command structure, and wearing 3 hats: Watch Commander (supervising officers in the field), Head of Internal Affairs Investigations (investigating complaints against officers), and Director of Training.  So, I found myself caught in the very dilemma my Army captain had warned me likely would happen to me were I to have insisted on going into the Army anyway!

Fate took a hand at that point.  I was looking for work (and getting a little desperate).  It was August, 1981.  I found myself next to the English Department at the first university at which I had studied (I had transferred to another to complete my degree), and on impulse decided to go in to see if my favorite professor was there, a gentleman I adored but hadn't seen in several years.  He was in, and we chatted.

When he learned I was unemployed he casually said, "Well, why don't you come teach here part-time as a Teaching Fellow while you work on an MA degree? -- after all, you got a secondary-level teaching certificate when you got your BA."  The pay way miserable, but I had enjoyed my classroom duties in security -- but most importantly, the bills were mounting.  It was a life-altering decision, in ways I couldn't possibly have dreamed.

The employment situation for English professors and instructors was very grim in those years; my department had shrunk in a decade from well over 70 professors to around 40.  I deliberately stretched out my studies as long as I could -- 4 years.  But along the way I decided to try my hand abroad.  Reasonably fluent in Spanish and having a life-long fascinated with everything Latin American, I turned my sights south -- but got nowhere fast.

Fate intervened again.  Every Friday, a group of professors and graduate students from across campus would gather for a drink at a restaurant across from the campus.  (This was in late 1983 or early 1984.)  A professor from another department told me, "Kurt, I'll bring a guy around here Monday you'll really like.  He's from Beijing."  Though I had no way of knowing it at the time, that meeting the following Monday was to lead me to Asia.

Zhang and I became good friends.  He told me I should apply to the Chinese government to teach in a university there.  I wrote the Ministry of Education, but the only reply I got -- many months later -- was "Welcome to apply," with no other information, instructions -- nothing.  I told Zhang about it, and he said the Education Consul from the PRC's Houston consulate was coming up in a few days, and as he was a university professor at Tianjin University, in Tianjin, the port city for Beijing, he might have some advice.

We met, and I didn't even realize that Li Hua Ying considered our meeting an interview; it certainly was like no interview I had experienced before.  He concluded by asking if I would be interested in teaching in his university, and if I had ever heard of his hometown, Tianjin.  I had liked the man instantly, so didn't have the heart that I had indeed heard of it -- it was on targeting maps for ICBM's when I was an Air Force cadet in the 1970's!  Anyway, I said I was interested, but I put little faith in much happening.

A week later I got a telegram asking me to arrive in February, 1985.  That threw me into a panic; I hadn't finished my degree yet, and there was no way I could by then; I had another course or 2 to take during the spring semester, already had my teaching assignments, and had yet to write a thesis.  I called Li and asked what to do.  The next day he called me to say he had sent a cable to the university, asking them to delay the invitation date until August, 1985 -- and a few days later, I got another telegram saying that.

After 3 years in China, 1 in Tianjin and 2 at Beijing Normal University in Beijing (where I married a woman from there), I and my new wife moved to America so she could pursue a graduate degree.  But I had Asia in my blood, and knew I had to come back.  After 2 years back in Texas, where I taught in university, I got a job offer at The University of Macau, so we went there, where I ended up staying 4 years.  (My wife and I divorced during that time.)  I could have stayed there -- but I didn't know it until too late.  With the upcoming return to Beijing of the Portuguese colony, the university was aggressively "localizing" -- letting foreign teachers go at the end of their contracts and replacing them with ethnic Chinese.  I ended up in Bangkok in June, 1994, teaching at Bangkok University.

My teaching experiences here were, for the most part, professionally unpleasant, so when I left my last post in October, 1997, I essentially retired, although in the autumn of 1999, I accepted a 2-3 month assignment teaching in a joint municipal government-private adult education in Daliang, China, about 90 kilometers north of Macau.  In the event, the assignment stretched out until June, 2000, though I made frequent returns to Bangkok, where I kept my apartment above the Texas Lone Staar Saloon in Washington Square.

Since returning for good in 2000, I've not taught again, devoting my time to BangkokAtoZ.com.

How long will I stay? -- a tough call; June 12th will mark my 10th anniversary since I first moved here, and I certainly never expected to stay here this long.  When I first moved here, I hated it, but force of circumstance prevented me from leaving.  I had planned to teach here a few years then retire back to Macau, an idea still strongly attractive to me -- I love Macau as I love no other place, as a place, anywhere -- but after a decade here, I have so many friends it's hard to imagine moving off for good.  Maybe I will end up dividing my time between here and there.

And keep plugging away at BangkokAtoZ.com . . .

Copyright © 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002,  2003, 2004, and 2005  by Kurt T. Francis, except as  noted otherwise.  Materials by Christopher G. Moore, Dean Barrett, Richard K. Diran, Sonia Pressman Fuentes, and Hardy Stockmann are copyrighted © by those respective authors.  All rights reserved.  Please see the Copyright Notice for further information.

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